A nurse in my outpatient therapy program recommends a prenatal vitamin without iron for almost everyone–male, or female, expecting, nursing, or not.
She also noted that it’s best for a patient to pick up her own meds from the pharmacy, since this is a good opportunity to ask questions of the pharmacist. Since our family often does tag team trips to Target, this was a good reminder.
Shortly after I started this weblog, I decided to focus more on learning, and less on mommy-ing. I am a mom, but I’m also a writer, a reader, a cinephile and an auto-didact, with thanks to Mental Multivitamin both for the term and for the role of that weblog played in clarifying the central role of learning.
With the arrival of Guppy last year, though, life changed. Learning remains a priority, but mommy duties have necessarily increased, and thus I write about them more. I try, however, to keep the stuff on kids and parenting focused on the learning–both mine and the kids.
I’ve written a handful of times about the continuing struggle I’ve had with depression since Guppy was born. I tell almost everyone in my life about it. Perhaps I do this because I’m an over-sharer and a queen of TMI, but I’d like to think I’m doing it for good reasons. I want to be accountable for continuing to get help and get better; I want to let people know that even if my shoes do match my bag that my insides are messy and angry. And I want to add my voice to the many who say, “I have the illness of depression; I need help.”
My post-partum depression isn’t the stuff of romantic books covers. It hasn’t been me sobbing quietly, or hiding out in bed. My depression is ugly–it’s impatient, angry, shouting, and cursing. I often have to mark the distinction between thinking about doing something harmful, and making a plan to do it. It’s a discouraging disinction to have to make; I’m constantly reminded that my mind is not a nice place to be. But it’s also heartening, because I find myself nearly always on the healthier side of the distinction.
I’m lucky I have a doctor who listened when I said “I feel angry all the time at my kid.” She urged me to get help, and followed up with me. I’m in an outpatient hospital program for my depression. It’s discouraging. Part of me feels like I’ve failed because I’m crazy and in the loony bin, even if it’s an outpatient one. I try to quiet that disparaging voice, though, because I’m doing a hard, good thing. I’m sick and it’s affecting all my family. We all need me to be doing better than I have been.
If you come here looking for humor, or edification, or stuff about girl detectives, and instead find posts about depression and mommy stuff, you might be disappointed. But I don’t want to be yet another person who denies the depression, or hides it, or downplays it. The bad news is that it sucks. The good news is that it’s likely to get better, and also that I’m still learning. As always, that’s what I’ll try to keep the focus on. My learning is an ongoing process, though I don’t always get to choose the topics.
For your edification, a few shoe definitions (these are mine, but there are lots more at Kristopher Dukes):
Clog: shoe with heavy, possibly wooden, sole.
Mule: closed-toe, open-heel shoe.
Slide: Open toe and heel.
Loafer: casual leather shoe.
The definitions are confusing, and this is more specificity than most people need. But yesterday I saw not one, but two, people commit the same foot faux pas, a loafer mule. One was on a woman, another on a man. Loafers and mules don’t mix. Mules in the animal world are the sterile offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Use the animal world as your guide. Mules are meant to be cute and kicky. Don’t try to force unnatural alliances like the open-backed loafer.
Further, mules are not meant to be worn with socks. Neither are sandals. Loafers can be worn with or without socks. And the term “casual clog” is redundant, because it implies that there is such a thing as a “dress clog.”
These rules are here to protect not only your feet, but your image. If you have questions, or disagree, spend some quality time in the archives of Manolo’s Shoe Blog. Manolo, he is a man who knows the thing or two about the feets. I’m fairly certain he’d back me up on all of the above.
My husband G. Grod sold me on Heather Havrilesky’s TV columns from Salon.com when he said “She’s the Dara Moskowitz of television reporting!” That’s a very high compliment in our house. I feel bad that HH has to watch so much bad tv in order to review it. But I really enjoy reading about even the shows I DON’T watch.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about the song reveal on the Battlestar Galactica finale till I read this. She wrote it better, and funnier, than I could have. So read, even if you don’t watch Battlestar; her writing is very good, and perhaps you will laugh, as I did.
(SPOILER ALERT: Details of “Battlestar Galactica” finale included in this column.)
Life is but a joke
And speaking of oddly placed songs, let’s get to the main event: Sunday night’s “Battlestar Galactica” finale. I was on board for this one from the start: I loved Lee Adama’s heartfelt speech at Baltar’s trial, particularly after he spent most of this season mooning and pouting and just generally acting like a petulant baby, loved the creepy music and the fact that Anders, Chief Tyrol, Tigh and Tory (Roslin’s press secretary) were the only ones who could hear it, loved the growing suspicion that they were all Cylons (Who better to be a Cylon, than Tigh?), loved the power outages and the mounting suspense… Yes, this was a finale that anyone could get behind.
Maybe it was a stretch to make so many longstanding characters Cylons, but maybe they just think that they’re Cylons. Who knows? Most importantly, it all felt momentous, big changes were clearly afoot, changes that didn’t involve any temples or empty stand-offs with the Cylons or adulterous affairs. Last night’s finale had me by the throat. And then…
Chief Tyrol: There must be some kinda way outta here.
Tigh: Said the joker to the thief.
Anders: There’s too much confusion here.
Tory: I can’t get no relief!
Oh my God! My stoner boyfriend from high school wrote the season finale of “Battlestar Galactica”!
How did that happen? Why did Ronald D. Moore take a break and hand over responsibility for the finale to a guy who spent most of his time doing shots of Bacardi 151 Rum and noodling Hendrix on his guitar? Was that wise, really? Didn’t Moore realize that my ex would make Bob Dylan the Cylon God?
Can you believe it? This is science fiction, it’s pure made-up, imaginary, insane fantasy, the sky’s the limit, you can do whatever you want, and you do whatever you want, and it’s working, for the most part, and you want to take a little break from that to indulge your jones for Dylan? It’s worth it to you, to alienate the vast majority of your audience at the end of your finale, just to reference a pretty cool song that, frankly, no longer seems all that cool since most of us have heard it, oh, fifty million times in the last 20 years?
When I heard those lyrics, all I could think was: Wow, I was way too hard on “The L Word.”
Oh yeah, and Starbuck’s still alive. I almost forgot.
Guppy was born over a year ago, but the depression and anxiety that came with him are not diminishing inversely to his growth. In spite of medication and the help of a good team of healthcare professionals, I have continued to struggle. To get me unstuck, my team recommended an outpatient therapy program instead of the sporadic therapy I have been doing, and I started this morning.
A small part of me hoped that someone would wave their hand and tell me I didn’t need to be there, and send me home. And, as has happened at every step of this depression, no one did. So I guess I belong.
What does one wear to a partial hospital program? As I’ve noted here before, I take care with my appearance, perhaps more so when I’m feeling worse, both as compensation and as a way to demonstrate some control when I don’t feel I have any elsewhere, e.g., Drake won’t listen, Guppy’s screaming again, but my accessories match my outfit AND I’m wearing mascara, so things can’t be too bad. I attempted to mesh style and comfort, and found myself wearing an outfit and accessories made up almost entirely of things I got from family and friends:
Black Max Mara sweater and black Tod’s bag, presents from friend N.
Blue, green, and black patterned top and jade drops on white gold hoops, from sister Ruthie
Green spring leather jacket espied years ago in Nordstrom Rack by sister Sydney, later tried on and purchased with sister Ruthie.
Navy Gloria Vanderbilt pants with a bit of Lycra, a bargain from Valu City courtesy of sister Sydney
Nixon Mini GTO watch, picked out with and also from G. Grod
Blue Venetian beaded bracelet made by friend S from my parents’ church, given while I was pregnant with Guppy
And the only thing I bought myself: $9.99 black Chuck Taylor knock-offs from Target
I had layers, and I was comfortable yet still stylish. The therapy program went pretty well, too.
I will be vague, in case you haven’t watched it yet. I liked the finale, but didn’t love it. There was a big reveal, but I didn’t buy it. It was way too big, and while they’d been leading up to it for a few episodes, it still felt like a fake out. I’m terrible at guessing things ahead of time, but I still don’t buy this.
They’re going heavy on the Jesus symbolism for Baltar. His hair and beard, his recent (random) socialism, and three women showing up to him when they did, and why they did, was very interesting, especially as it’s just a few weeks from Easter.
I don’t like the character of Apollo. I liked the content of his speech, but it didn’t feel genuine.
And I’m still thinking on the finally revealed “music” that several characters had been hearing for a few weeks now. It’s an odd, deliberate choice with many possible meanings. And thus far, none of them make any possible sense.
Ronald Moore, please stop futzing around with other stuff, get back to the show. You did a good job in that you didn’t hit a sophomore slump till season three. Get back in the game. Explain that reveal, and that music. If you can sell me on those, you’ll have me back for season 4.
Speaking of defective products, don’t even get me started on baby monitors. I swear, they’re programmed to self destruct after ninety days. More links and vitriol when time allows.
Because life with ongoing post-partum depression that isn’t responding to treatment isn’t hard enough. Ha! My current bugaboo is things that break. Because not only were they a waste of time and effort, but they either need to be thrown away, or sent back to the manufacturer so that someone can be held accountable for the shoddy work. I should probably just throw these away, but they represent so much money, so much hope for a product that would work, that I can’t quite bear to just toss them.
Evenflo Top of Stair baby gate. Arrived broken from Target.com. Returned.
Summer Top of Stair baby gate. Purchased at Target. Broke within days of installation. Worse, the pieces that broke off were about exactly the size of baby windpipe–shoddy construction AND a choking hazard! Thanks, Target! Thanks, Summer! Returned, but I don’t think I’ve finished spilling bile on this one yet.
Kitchenart adjust a cup measuring set. Inner plunger broke apart. Why is it multiple pieces? Why not just one? Never found a use for the spoons.
Oxo cheese slicer #1. G. Grod threw away before I could rescue it from the trash.
Oxo cheese slicer #2, which I was excited to see came with a replacement wire. Guess what? It wasn’t the wire that broke. Grr.
Kitchenaid cheese slicer. Huge and unwieldy, and still couldn’t slice off the rind of my Dante 6-month sheep’s cheese.
Nike watch. Every time I pushed the upper right button, I also hit the lower left. Bad design, then the strap separated and couldn’t even be contained with duct tape.
Seiko watch. Can’t stay working. A battery works for a few weeks, then caput. I loved this watch.
I’m sure there are more broken items littering our home, waiting to be sent to their maker with a vitriolic letter from me. I’ve got to get these out of here. They’re wrecking the feng shui, and I’m going to get an ulcer from all this internal bile. More links to come when I finish complaining about these shoddy products online.
This week’s episode with the boneless woman was more cringe-inducing than usual, and there was no Stephen Fry, so I was a little disappointed overall. Sully said goodbye, but is that the last we’ve seen of him? My husband G. Grod thinks he’ll either be dead or evil by the end of the season. I think evil; perhaps he’s the suffocating serial killer who nearly got Bones earlier in the season? Poor Bones; she does not have a good track record, as Booth so unkindly pointed out to her.
For a funnier use of the term boneless, check out Mo Willems’s Knuffle Bunny. The “K” is pronounced in Knuffle (as it would be in German). And the term for one of Trixie’s tantrum contortions is “going boneless,” which Willems attributes to his wife.
What Do They Put in There?
Stonyfield yogurt
crack for the younger set, in
cup, bottle or quart.
Spring
Sunshine gives, and takes
You banish suicide skies
Yet highlight all the dust.
OMG! I just finished reading issue #5 of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s comic Criminal. Please pardon my slippage into jejune exclamation, but I can’t contain myself; it was that good. Wow.
Issue five is the conclusion of storyline “Coward,” about a thief named Leo. Leo’s never been caught before, but his latest heist might prove the exception to his many rules. There’s a good cast of characters, though many of them don’t survive the storyline. Brubaker has created a good canvas to work from. This is dark and violent; it owes a lot to noir. Its violence isn’t gratuitous, though. Each incidence serves the story.
My husband G. Grod highly recommends Brubaker and Phillips’s other collaboration, Sleeper, and I may not put off reading it.
At the end of Criminal #5, Brubaker asked a bunch of friends and comic-book creatives to share their favorite noir movies. Some I’d seen, some not. The ones I own, I’m going to re-watch. The ones I don’t, I’m going to seek out. And I’m not going to list them; go to your local comic shop and buy all five issues of Criminal for yourself. What? Your shop doesn’t have them all? Well, give my two favorite shops a try: Big Brain Comics in Minneapolis MN and Showcase Comics in Bryn Mawr PA. The trade paperback is due next month.
For a while, I felt bored with comics, and didn’t like anything I read. I think I see the light at the end of the ennui tunnel.
Little Darlings was another book I read surreptitiously as a teenager. It had a pink cover with a white bikini bathing suit on it, so it was not inconspicuous. “Don’t Let the Title Fool You” was the tagline. Little Darlings, was originally a 1980 movie with Tatum O’Neal as idealistic rich girl Ferris and Kristy McNichol as streetwise poor girl Angel. Each bets that she will be the first to lose her virginity.
#15 in my 2007 movie challenge was MI3. In my defense, this was my husband’s pick. I was in the mood for an entertaining action movie. This couldn’t even fit that generous bill, though Cruise is strangely more believable as Ethan Hunt than he is in real life married to Katie Holmes. Hunt must rescue two damsels in distress, a colleague and later his fiancee. Phillip Seymour Hoffman does nothing special with the role of villain. Midway through this movie I turned on my computer so I could at least get some work done. When the twist at the end came, I didn’t care, and I was very annoyed at the plot device of getting the man emotionally involved by putting “his” women in danger. Woven into the movie were homages to roles from Cruise’s career. This felt gimmicky and annoying. Overall, this movie by J.J. Abrams, the creator of shows Alias and Lost, felt like an overlong, merely OK, TV episode, not a blockbuster action film.
#14 in my 2007 movie challenge was Little Miss Sunshine, which I rationalized buying at Target because:
1. I wanted to see it before the Oscars
2. It was on sale for $16.99, which is
3. Lots cheaper than two tickets, popcorn, candy, a drink, and a babysitter
It was funny and bittersweet, and owed at least a little to National Lampoon’s Family Vacation. The performances were strong all around. It brought back memories of my youth, when my family got in a van and drove hither and yon, inspiring adolescent horror of being stuck with “these people”.
#13 in my 2007 movie challenge was Dark City, another entry prompted by this list of Fifteen Geek Movies. Literally and figuratively very dark, Dark City is a precursor of The Matrix that examines some of the same themes of individuality, society, and choice. Where The Matrix had Keanu well cast as the none-too-bright Neo, Dark City has a badly coiffed Rufus Sewell, sporting what looks like 80’s rock-star hair. I did, though, appreciate Jennifer Connelly’s strong eyebrows. I found the fight scene at the end silly and overlong, but the film itself is definitely worthwhile.
#12 in my 2007 movie challenge was Nine Queens, an Argentinian film that had been on our Tivo forever. This heist film is clever and charming. While I knew that someone was scamming someone, I thought it did a good job of spinning things out till the end.
#11 in my 2007 movie challenge was The Departed, in a theater with good popcorn. I thought this film was well worth the effort and expense to see away from home, and also that it deserved the Best Picture Oscar. All the performances were solid, particularly those in smaller roles. I was also very impressed by DiCaprio. Scorcese took a Hong Kong action film and adapted it to South Boston. Some griped that he simply remade a movie. I think it was an impressive transposition. My only quibble was the very last shot of an animal–alright, already, I got it.
I don’t like memes–way too much me, me, me. Yet the movie one making the rounds reminded me why I love the movies and still go out to them even though it’s expensive and hard to do so. Thus, my responses to the meme I saw at GirlReaction and The Sheila Variations. You can see that Duff and I have some opinions in common. I’ll try to keep things brief.
1. Name a movie that you have seen more than 10 times.
The Breakfast Club
2. Name a movie that you’ve seen multiple times in the theater.
Branagh’s Henry V, and Cinema Paradiso; both were showing at a nice theater in DC in 1990. (It was a two-plex up Wisconsin Ave., I think, and may not exist anymore). My loves of movies, seeing them in theaters, and Shakespeare all sprang from here.
3. Name an actor that would make you more inclined to see a movie.
Classic: Cary Grant. Modern: George Clooney
Added later: Don Cheadle
4. Name an actor that would make you less likely to see a movie.
Never say never–I’ve seen great movies with actors I usually don’t care for, like Out of Sight with J. Lo, and Femme Fatale with Rebecca Romijn and Antonio Banderas. But OK, maybe Tom Hanks.
5. Name a movie that you can and do quote from.
I am terrible at quoting from movies.
6. Name a movie musical that you know all of the lyrics to all of the songs
Added later: And probably Xanadu. My sisters and I saw it in the theater and bought the LP. Olivia Newton John, Gene Kelley, Greek mythology, and ELO–awesome when I was a pre-teen, I’m guessing not so much, now.
7. Name a movie that you have been known to sing along with
I’ve blocked it out, but I’m sure I sang along to Dirty Dancing in college.
8. Name a movie that you would recommend everyone see.
Henry V
9. Name a movie that you own.
Henry V
10. Name an actor that launched his/her entertainment career in another medium but who has surprised you with his/her acting chops.
J. Lo in Out of Sight
11. Have you ever seen a movie in a drive-in? If so, what?
Yes; a double feature of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Pretty in Pink. I drank pink wine coolers.
12. Ever made out in a movie?
Not that I remember.
13. Name a movie that you keep meaning to see but just haven’t yet gotten around to it.
La Règle du Jeu. It’s been on our Tivo forever.
14. Ever walked out of a movie?
Yes, Grandview, U.S.A.
15. Name a movie that made you cry in the theater.
Cinema Paradiso, every time
16. Popcorn?
You betcha, as long as there’s real butter for it, and Junior Mints to mix in.
17. How often do you go to the movies (as opposed to renting them or watching them at home)?
Even with two small kids, about twice a month.
18. What’s the last movie you saw in the theater?
The Departed
19. What’s your favorite/preferred genre of movie?
I’m equal opportunity, though I don’t like horror and violence.
20. What’s the first movie you remember seeing in the theater?
21. What movie do you wish you had never seen?
22. What is the weirdest movie you enjoyed?
Tapeheads, which I saw for the first time last weekend
23. What is the scariest movie you’ve seen?
Poltergeist, which I saw in the theater and probably also saw more than 10 times.
24. What is the funniest movie you’ve seen?
A Fish Called Wanda
Remember how at college you could follow the mystery meat’s many incarnations through the week? It usually started on Monday with meatloaf, then tacos, spaghetti sauce, chili, and by Friday there were some scary lookin’ huevos rancheros on the suspiciously invented “Mexican Night”. Maybe you went to a college that had better food than mine did, but that’s what I thought of when I read about Thursday night’s Office remix on A List of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago. NBC is airing 2 reruns that have been re-edited and mixed into one hour-long show, with new bits added. Unlike mystery meat, The Office is funny, so I’m interested to see what they do. It’ll be like sitcom casserole, and the new bits are like added cheese!
After this recent column on olives by City Pages food critic Dara Moskowitz, I went haring off for some to go with my other current food fixation, cheese. I’ve long been a fan of the picholines from Surdyk’s mentioned in the article. My current favorite pizza from Punch is a margherita with mushrooms and picholines. Kalamatas have long been a staple in our house and cooking. I always get ones with pits; those without are mushier and less flavorful. I don’t mind pitting olives. I put the ends of the olive between my forefinger and thumbtips, then squeeze. The olive opens like a coin purse and gives up the pit.