The other day my sister and I compared notes on our first mammograms. She’s four years younger than I am, so she wasn’t quite due yet, but she had a lumpy spot that her doctor thought was worth looking at (especially since our mother survived breast cancer almost 20 years ago). We agreed: OWWEE, but manageable. And we’re both fine.

This same week, my friend T. started chemo to treat stage II breast cancer. It was diagnosed when she was 8 months pregnant. She had a lumpectomy right away, but delayed the start of chemo until three weeks after her baby’s birth. This meant changing OBs, because her (former) doctor insisted that the only option was to deliver the baby by c-section at 38 weeks, then quickly remove the tumor and start chemo. T. refused, arguing that she’d prefer her baby to be born full term, thanks, and recover from the (nonsurgical) birth before undergoing chemo. Now that’s the kind of mama grizzly I like to support.

My friends here in Mayberry and I organized a meal schedule* for T. and her family (despite the fact that she and her husband are both trained chefs. That’s not intimidating at all). As the nominal keeper of this schedule, I’ve been lucky enough to e-meet some really lovely people, people that care about T. and her family too, people that I wouldn’t otherwise have encountered. It’s a good feeling.

Our book club will put together a care package for T. based on Susan’s list. You probably know Susan, and if you do you’ll know why I’ve posted her warrior princess minifig in the sidebar. I may not be able to deliver her a hot meal, but virtual hugs, funding for the great causes she supports, and spreading her important message as far as I can? That I can do.

And you can:

• Get your own warrior princess button
• Join the Army of Women (I’ve been a member for a year or more–it costs nothing more than your time to read the occasional email)
• Contribute to Crickett’s Answer to help breast cancer survivors
• Read more about inflammatory breast cancer
• Get a mammogram when you turn 40! We’re all doing it!

*shout-out to Foodtidings.com — so helpful!

Kids of the World:

The information I am about to reveal may shock you. It may amaze you and anger you. It may, in fact, confirm your own suspicions.

Through careful observation, sophisticated information-gathering technology, and top-secret intelligence techniques, I have answered the question that children have been asking for generations.

What happens after kids go to bed? There’s a reason we are being held prisoner in our bedrooms, isn’t there? I know there is.

Kids of the world, I must answer with an emphatic yes. My investigation has revealed the following practices by our parents:

• Consumption of contraband foods, including but not limited to desserts and candy, multiple servings thereof; chips; French fries; and other so-called “not good for you” items (In fact, “not good for kids” seems to be code for “just fine for adults especially in large quantities.”)
• Consumption of contraband beverages (including a substance that looks remarkably like grape juice but most certainly doesn’t taste like it)
• Consumption of said items while sitting on the good furniture
• Watching of television, including entire movies
• “Working” on the computer (alleged)
• Use of the so-called “work” telephone for game-playing
• Telephone conversations which we children have no ability to intercept or interrupt
• Bathroom visits which we children have no ability to intercept or interrupt

Kids of the world, I urge you to conduct your own investigations into these sinister practices. Share your results using the UnderPlayGround Network. Plans to defeat these unfair bedtime restrictions are underway. Stay tuned for further instruction.

alternate title: I Was Under the Impression that the Craptasticness Would Be Confined to 2009

At the end of the summer, my one-month-old netbook had to be sent back to the manufacturer for repair. I got it back, fixed, for free, but not in time for a business trip (which is the whole reason I bought the netbook).

Right before Thanksgiving, the hard drive on my regular, workhorse laptop died. I limped along for a week or so on the netbook and my husband’s laptop, then rebuilt everything on my old laptop when I got the new hard drive. You know, re-finding all my favorites, reinstalling all the software, downloading stuff like Tweetdeck and Adobe Reader, restoring all my files from my (thank god) backup. (Shout out to Mozy.com, by the way.)

A week or so after that, the hard drive on Jeff’s laptop died. So then he had to order another one, and go through all the restoration process, accompanied by much gnashing of teeth. He is still convinced that I caused the failure by downloading Firefox. Which, no. And, he was running IE6! I couldn’t function!

Saturday night, I spilled, like, a tablespoon of tea into my laptop.

Yup. Dead hard drive AGAIN. Another $150 and another two days of my life, gone.

2010, so far I am not impressed.

(P.S. This a.m., I am not able to comment on Blogger blogs, for some reason … sorry)

Last spring I posted that I would be happy to go anywhere to test-drive a car. Someone must have been paying attention. Just a few months later, on the day before BlogHer, I was not only behind the wheel of several new cars, I was also sporting a fluorescent yellow vest, as well as eye and ear protection… And the rest of this story can now be found at The Full Mommy.

Photo by Leighann.

I hand you a stack of 17 envelopes. Sixteen of them contain a fat check, enough to make you very happy and comfortable. The 17th envelope holds proof of complete financial ruin.

Do you open an envelope?

I show you a tray of 17 crystal flutes. Sixteen of them are filled with the finest, most delicious Champagne you’ll ever taste. The 17th contains a deadly poison.

Do you take a glass?

*

You can’t make good decisions without information.

Too much information makes it painfully impossible, or impossibly painful, to make a decision.

*

There is no black or white. There are only shades of gray, and they go on for so long I could never reach the end.

*

One in 17. That’s the chance that another baby would suffer the same fate as his brother did.

I don’t think I like those odds.

The other day I landed (as you do) on an article from some newspaper about a family with seven children who had just adopted three more. The three new additions, plus one of the original seven, had Down syndrome. Okay, so that caught my eye but if that’s what they want for their family, more power to ‘em. But there was an offhand comment in the story that stopped me for a minute. Something about how one of the newly arrived children had developed a strong attachment to an older sister, to the point where the older child sometimes had to hide or switch places with her twin in order to get a break from the clingy toddler. My train of thought chugged along the track something like this:

ME: Well, that seems excessive. Should that really be the older kid’s responsibility?

MYSELF: That’s how the Duggars do it. All the older ones take care of the younger ones while the parents, like, blow-dry their hair or or something.

I: That’s also the way it’s been since time immemorial. Siblings did the child care while parents hunted/gathered/farmed/riveted.

ME: Yeah, but this is now. Aren’t the parents right there? I can see a child being required to help, but how much is enough?

MYSELF: How is it different from having to mow the lawn or scrub the kitchen floor?

I: Dude, that’s a totally different kind of outsourcing.

ME: Let’s ask the internet.

Despite my little rant yesterday, I love our school. It sounds corny to say “our” school, but it really is a warm and fuzzy community, and our whole family is a part of it. There are only 5 classrooms, 75 families, and 110 kids. Everyone knows Jo, and most everyone knows Opie and me too. We look out for each other’s kids on the playground after the bell rings. There’s one boy who always bums a ride to the library from someone else’s mom, because he’s afraid to cross the bridge between the school and the library. We’re only five years old, and the one and only charter school in our district, so we have to stick together to justify our existence regularly.

The classrooms are mixed-age, so kids and teachers stay together for two to three years. I absolutely love this; it encourages the little ones to look up to the big ones and the big ones to be good helpers and role models for the littles. Plus there’s less time spent on kids and teachers getting to know each other at the beginning of each year; my daughter’s 1st grade teacher will also be her 2nd and 3rd grade teacher. (Jo called Mrs. R. “my best teacher for life” on her end-of-year thank-you drawing.)

Yesterday–two days after the last day of school, it should be noted–one of the mothers from this class sent out an email to several other parents complaining about Mrs. R. It made me sick and I couldn’t shake that feeling of disgust all day. Flinging untrue allegations and threats about the school board and “the state” in a mass email? Not cool. I don’t think anything will come of it, because of this parent’s past unfounded complaints. But the thought of our lovely teacher being tarnished by this bothers me, a lot. I and several others replied to the mail (despite my fear of poking the cranky with a stick) as gently and neutrally as we could, stating that our experience and our children’s had been very different from hers.

I hope she gets the hint. I’m sorry that she doesn’t see what she’s missing, and I’m even more sorry that her child is missing out on it too.

We won’t be leaving for my brother’s place for a few days, but yesterday Opie packed a bag. Stuffed it, actually: “So I’ll have choices, Mommy.” Here is what he wants to bring:

• 2 pairs shorts (how optimistic)
• 1 pair pants (also optimistic, given the limited success of potty training thus far)
• 3 short-sleeved shirts
• 2 long-sleeved shirt (it goes without saying that none of the above articles of clothing actually match each other)
• 1 pair football pants (from Halloween costume)
• 1 football jersey (from thrift shop)
• 1 Superfriends coloring book
• 1 rubber dog-nose mask
• 2 pairs faux pilot goggles (a spare is important)
• 1 string Mardi Gras beads (turquoise)
• 1 6-inch-long piece of grosgrain ribbon (striped)

I guess I’ll be packing the socks and underwear in my luggage.

*

Like Mrs. Chicken, I feel strange posting something frivolous today. I’ve been unable to write about Maddie (and now Thalon) in part because a silly, petty feeling weighs on me–that every mention of them is a tacit, although certainly unintended, exclusion of so many others: other babies who have been lost (yes, including my own), other families suffering other tragedies, too numerous or too unknown to mention. None of it is fair, none of it. But all I can do is enjoy the children I have.

Remember when I donated to Donors Choose? Yesterday I got a packet of thank-you notes from the kids who received the scissors and tape. Some excerpts:

“So, thank you again for the scissors and tape just remember it helped a lot. Sincerely, Mike”

“You know what, I was the one who came up with the name ‘cut into education’ that was cool wasn’t it. Thanks again. Sincerely, Kenny”

“We really appreciate the scissors that you sent. Before, when we were doing a project last year in seventh grade, we had the worst scissors. (I mean that in a bad way) They coudn’t cut for anything and they always got caught in the paper. This letter is to tell you thank you for the scissors and tape. Sincerely, Khalil”

“The scissors helped a lot because we had these crappy ones and they didn’t even cut. And the tape, we didn’t even have any, but you gave us some and now we use it for a lot of stuff. Every time I see them I think of you and I say thanks in my head. Sincerely, Sean”

Thank YOU for reading because every page view helped fund that project.

And if you are still feeling charitable: My sister is running a marathon through Team in Training. She only needs $850 more to reach her goal of $3800. If the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a group you’d like to support, consider throwing a few bucks my sister’s way. She would appreciate it!

I haven’t been through my reader yet today (*twitch*) but I know from Twitter that many of my favorite bloggers are participating in Blog Action Day today. Magpie, PunditMom, and Ilina are making donations based on the number of comments they receive today, so go forth and comment, please! (If you’re doing this too, let me know and I’ll link you up.)

Last year I donated my BlogHer Ads earnings to Donors Choose. Any suggestions for a recipient for this year? I just read about Jewish World Watch’s Solar Cooker Project in Darfur. A $30 donation provides a refugee family with solar cookers and training to use them. This helps curb deforestation and also saves women and girls from making dangerous trips to gather firewood (they risk getting raped every time they venture out). Thirty bucks!

I also want to help at home. My grocery store collects donations for our local food banks right at the checkout (the store prefills bags of supplies, I pay for it, then it goes straight the food bank). With food prices skyrocketing and everyone feeling squeezed, I remember how very lucky we are and I buy one of these bags each time I’m at the market.

The problems are so huge and diverse and intractable (how do we fix Darfur / Iraq / Afghanistan / Haiti? how do we fix health care? how do we fix crummy schools and evaporating jobs and foreclosed homes?). What I don’t want to do is let this overwhelm me into inaction. One local project and one international one? That’s doable. And every little bit helps.

What are you doing?

PS Don’t forget FreeRice. I just donated 1000 grains and learned two new words (“vaticinate” means “prophesy” and “raddled” means “worn out”).