Actually, the title of this post is a bald-faced lie. OF COURSE I am going to get my children things for Christmas. I just don’t know what I can get them anymore.

Maybe it’s because I live in a media-sheltered existence, but up until now I really knew very little about the toxicity of stuff we buy.  What I don’t know could still fill volumes, but now I am a little more informed.  I was just listening to a podcast of Fresh Air, featuring author Mark Shapiro who has just published his book Exposed – the Toxic Chemistry of Everyday Products. I am not surprised to learn (though I’m still upset and alarmed nonetheless) that products made for the USA’s consumption are toxic as heck, but in Europe they actually regulate what stuff can be introduced into their countries; from toys to cosmetics. By contrast, we yokels here in the USA are painting our faces with toxic chemicals, and putting toxic binkies and teethers in the mouths of our babes.

Shapiro explains that the European Union bases regulations on “an accumulation of evidence” that suggests substantial harm, and pulls products on that basis quickly. The USA instead looks for total absolute proof of harm before doing anything to regulate consumer goods. It’s a cost-benefit analysis: The cost to industry is weighed against the benefit to society.  hmmm…. a business might lose some profit, while consumers might lose their lives to cancer, lose their pregnancies to toxic chemicals that compromise fertility, and have babies suffer from birth defects, childhood disease, and more. Gee, that bottom line really needs someone to stand up for it!

What are the toxic chemicals that you should be concerned about? Lead, for example, could well be in your favorite shade of lipstick. Lead poisoning is a serious threat– lead is a dangerous poison if you eat it.  Who thought it should be in lipstick?  The mind boggles. Other heavy metals, too, like mercury could be added here and there and you just wouldn’t know about it.

But the sneaky and scary substance that seems to be all around us, hidden away, is a group of plastic additives known as phthalates. As I understand it, phthalates are added to nearly every piece of soft, molded plastic. The dashboard of your car. Your child’s rubber ducky, or plastic teething ring.   Perhaps it’s in the plastic utensils that you use to stir the soup, or spread the frosting on the cupcakes you made to celebrate your child’s birthday. The usefulness of phthalates is that the additive makes plastic more pliable, and moldable.

What is the harm? Well, if you ask the researchers in the US, it’s not PROVEN. However, in Europe and even recently in California, they are concerned enough to ban products with phthalates because they don’t want to risk an increase in a variety of health issues, including allergies, genital abnormalities, diabetes, cancer,  and reduced fertility in both men and women.

Apparently what happens with products that aren’t considered safe for kids in Europe is that the EU officials will turn away shipments of toxic toys and send them back to China. Then the toys are sent to the US instead. And guess what? They’re such a good price! What a deal! I’m can’t wait to start buying up cheap toys!

The big problem I have is that a little information is a dangerous thing, though probably not as bad as having no information at all. I want to go through my kids stuff and try to figure out what, if anything, is dangerous to them.  I am still in the process of trying to understand in what way phthlates cause harm: is it only if you stick it in your mouth?  I don’t wear makeup – except on halloween, and on a very rare occasion, so I’m not eating lead lipstick, or swallowing phthlates from makeup, and neither are my children.

For that matter, my kids are old enough now that they really don’t put toys in their mouths anymore.  I don’t know yet if there is a danger to just being around phthlates: for example, do they give off gases that are toxic? I’ve read that this toxic substance is one of those odorless, colorless oily things that is mixed into the plastic recipes, giving toys and other things flexibility.  I don’t know if that means that harder plastics are safer?  The more I think about it, the more I feel a fear that we have a toxic things all around us, and I don’t know how it can or will affect me and my family.

Add to the toxicity alarm my own anti-consumerist bent, and my distaste for exploited workers near and far, (and not to mention my own tight-fisted frugal ways) and you can start to see why I have some issues with getting my kids what they want.  And they want it all… they really want their toys from China.  Here’s a sampling of what my kids want for Hanukkah and Christmas (yes, we celebrate both in this household):

Calico Critters Play House
Bright Eyes (a stuffed toy that we saw at the supermarket)
Littlest Pet Shop
A Robotic Life-like Guinea Pig (um, we HAVE REAL guinea pigs, what do we need a robotic one for??)
A little dog that barks (I am NOT getting that. Ugh, barking?? )
Webkinz

I am pretty sure that all of the above are things made in China.  I don’t know under what conditions the toys are made.  I don’t know if they are toxic either in the present or over time as plastic degrades.  All I know is my kids want them.

So, yeah, I wish I was getting nothin’ for Christmas – nothing toxic anyway.   And nothing that came from the hands of child laborers, or other exploited people.  We don’t even have room for the toys we have now! And yet the kids want more!

It’s a real dilemma.  I don’t have any easy answers.  I’ve done a bit of web searching for alternative toys, and sure they are out there. But I have yet to find something that actually substitutes well for the actual things my children want.

How’s your holiday shopping going?

. . . So far, I’ve got nothin’.

Reading a chapter or part of one each night is fast becoming a very popular nightly ritual; most nights we read some of a chapter book and then A and I head to her room for a quick picture book before turning out the light.  (I don’t want her to miss out on the joy of reading picture books just because her big sister is a chapter book junkie.) Here are a few samples of what we’ve read to the kids lately.

Danny Champion of the World — by Roald Dahl. What would it be like to live in a little caravan with the best Dad ever? This is a quaint children’s novel about one boy and his dad, and the adventures they have in their little town. I love how Roald Dahl’s stories have a raw honesty to them.  It is so outside of our current “sanitized readings” that one gets nowaday.  His stories don’t hide the dark sides of life.

In spite of my enthusiasm for children’s books from other eras, D and I both have a hard time reading bits of stories to our kids that depict severe punishment.  I sometimes have  to soften stories a little, though I am loathe to do it.

In Danny, there is a description of the boy being hit very severely by his teacher.  I included this part because I felt like it made for interesting reading and it makes you feel in awe of  the boy’s dad, who wants to go beat the living daylights out of the teacher. That’s just one anecdote in the story, not a main plot point or anything. Like in James and the Giant Peach: it’s twisted and dark how James’ parents get killed by a rampaging rhino escaped from London Zoo. And his awful aunts get killed when the peach rolls over them and flattens them. Twisted ! Dark! Funny!  Not this watered down crap you see now a days, where hardly anything happens. And yet there’s an other worldliness to much of it, so it’s not horrific–  unlike watching the evening news (something which I avoid).

Now we’re working our way through Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I could not bring myself to read the words on the page where it said that Laura’s Pa got the strap from the wall and whipped her with it (this was punishment for Laura having slapped her sister in the face).  I just said something like, “So Laura’s Pa had to spank her.” Less vivid, less upsetting that way, and it didn’t interfere with the plot of the book.

I confess I also played down the brown hair / blond hair jealousy subplot. My daughters, we noticed, have the same hair as Mary and Laura in the book! The big one with blond, the little one kind of mousy brown.  I did NOT want to introduce into my little one’s mind the idea that blond hair is prettier than brown! Instead of reading that Mary had beautiful golden curls, while Laura had plain, ugly brown hair, I said that Laura had beautiful brown curls. This played out poorly with the plot, but I felt it was worth it.

I love Little House for its descriptions of life in a much simpler time, when there was much physical work to be done, and how little the children had and yet how happy they were. It’s something I want my kids to think about as we prepare for Havemoreakah and Consumermas, the big winter holidays. What if I just get them a pig’s bladder and a rag doll, and get rid of everything else in the house. Then they could really be happy!

I’ve also read them the first two books of the Harry Potter series.  These are fun, but so much less rich than these older books that I just discussed. I wonder how well the Potter series will read, in a hundred years?

Guess I’ll go eat some worms.

This simple phrase is really a perfect one to describe how I feel when I’m depressed.

Not (yet) suicidal or anything, but just feeling really low. Really insecure.

I don’t know why I get this way sometimes. (other than, hello… it’s the depression, stupid)

I just know my eyes are welling up, my mouth is twitching downwards, I feel spooky and tingly and sad. I feel like I’m a TERRIBLE friend. An AWFUL and irresponsible cat owner (Luna is still off in the wide world, gawd knows where).

I know it’s not true that nobody likes me. I can even be aware of that fact, and think that at the exact same time as I sit, words blurring in front of me, tears rolling down my nose. Maybe it’s the phase of the moon. Maybe it’s the cold, dark, gray and rainy days we’ve had lately. You can barely notice the vibrant colors of fall with all this chill surrounding you all the time.Sob.

It doesn’t really fit into this post’s depressing theme, but I have one anecdote I can share that’s kind of special. After all my angst, I finally did calm down. To bed we went, D and I, me super intent on hurrying up and sleeping RIGHT NOW. Oh, such a restful feeling!
Meanwhile, D dropped off into his early sleep phase, a kind of hypno-drowse that he goes into before falling into total sleep. It is times like this that he talks in his sleep. Sometimes it’s unintelligible mumbles, or bizarre dream words, but last night it was clear as a bell.

“I wish I knew how to make [Pann] happy,” he sleep-talked, “I just love her so much.”

So yeah, not everybody hates me.

Worms, anyone?

Okay, I know this isn’t a particularly original or profound observation, but socks are a real pain to keep track of.

This has driven me crazy for years, but now that there are 4 of us? Aaargghhhh!

Sorting socks sucks. And trying to get out the door in the morning when neither I nor the 7-year-old have a matched pair in the drawer? Gah!!!!

I just took a load of laundry out of the drier and sorted it. It had 4 matched pairs of socks, and 7 mismatches. HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN? The socks were all together when they went into the basket, weren’t they? This isn’t even a particularly bad load of wash– it didn’t have much of the kids’ clothing in it. Those loads generally have many more mismatched socks.

Has anyone, in the history of the world, found a way to deal with this that isn’t crazy-making?

I have been thinking a lot about sleep lately. In part this is because I had so much time to consider it these last couple nights, lying awake in bed, when I should have been actually sleeping rather than just thinking about it*. Another reason is my incessant obsession with reading baby blogs, and all these moms with adorable little babies seem to be, in general, not getting enough sleep.  (Go figure.)

I remember well the sleeplessness of early motherhood. It was an other-worldly experience, being so acquainted with the many hours of the night. For my first baby, I was very vigilant with making sure she was a) still breathing  and b) fed as often as she wanted to.  Thus, a peep from her, and there were the feedings: the 1:10 AM, nurse for 20 minutes, watch her sleeping in awe, slump off to sleep, and then… by  3 AM, doing it all again. Then the murky 4:33 AM when you really, really feel there is no justice and sleep seems like a strange thing to try to do so many times in one night. By 6 AM, daylight would creep uninvited into my room, making me bitter and annoyed. Go away. I am trying to sleep. Again.

On the other hand, I also remember the joy of the nap with a baby and cats. And a book nearby at all times. Oh well, can’t get up, I’ve got a baby to nurse, a cat I can’t disturb, and I’m also not yet done my chapter. Read and nurse, and doze, and pet the cat. (”Dear, just leave that whole pie right there by the bed. And that water bottle… I’m gonna need it…”)

Now-a-days I’ve still got parenthood-related sleep complications. I often fall asleep in the bed with my 4 year old, soothing her down to rest and making sure she’s cozy and comfortable. There are times when I wake in her room with the sun, having never returned to the big bed and the arms of my mate.

There are also nights where I lie awake thinking and thinking and Not Sleeping; where thoughts intrude on the restful night. There are no babies crying, or requiring nursing. No leaky diapers (or breasts) to soil my sheets. Just tension and worry, or an inability to fall asleep for No Particular Reason. By comparison, those multiple feeding  nights were softly blissful, even while making me weary as heck. There was a miracle, a reason, a rationale for feeling so tired the next day. It is a badge of pride, that kind of sleep deprivation.

I remember calling into a radio show at some point when my babe was young; it was a bone-headed MD guest on some local talk program, droning on and on about how mothers shouldn’t have to sacrifice their sleep, that it would be better to just get someone else to feed the baby so they can have a full night’s sleep. This was so entirely counter to both my own good sense about how to care for a baby, and how to survive parenthood, that I called in. I was put on the air. I asked if there were any studies to show how sleep needs change during early motherhood? Because the truth was, aside from a handful of very difficult nights, I was finding that I felt well rested in spite of frequent wakings. I felt sure there must be some biological change that the human mind can manage in order to survive with less sleep, in order to properly care for our young. The dumb MD had no clue, and no answer, (no surprise there), so I stick with my hypothesis: humans need to do stuff at night to care for their young — we may not always like missing sleep, but we can adapt it.

The trouble is, getting back into some new kind of sleep groove seems tough.  I once had a co-worker who told me that he hasn’t had a full night’s sleep since the birth of his first child.  At the time, his youngest was 5 years old; the older was 11. That’s eleven years of sleep disturbance and apparently not much hope in sight!

For a really fun and interesting insight into sleep research and the value and purpose of sleep, I highly recommend that you listen to this episode of Radio Lab (#302). Radio Lab is a little bit like The American Life only its focus is science, and it’s more hip, and more upbeat.

* I started this post months ago… actually this week, I’m not having trouble sleeping at all. Trouble waking, yes, but trouble sleeping, no. Bleh.

(Sniff. Cat still gone. Not going to write about it.)

I talked to my Dad a couple days before Thanksgiving. He had decided to stay put in Florida, rather than head back north to spend the holiday with his wife and her family. The reason? His health is too poor right now to travel. He’s feeling weak and short of breath, and his heart rate has dropped to a dangerously low level. And he’s ALONE. There’s nobody there with him in his mobile home; he says the whole park is deserted.

But he is not going in the hospital. He’s decided that he never wants to be admitted to a hospital ever again. He didn’t like being the ICU for nine days over the summer, and he just doesn’t want to do that again.

How am I supposed to interpret this? I figure it’s just his way of deciding how his last days on earth will be spent. I am wondering if I should hop on a plane and say goodbye or something, but that seems really morose and perhaps over dramatic too. Maybe he will be fine, and maybe not.

He and I talked on the phone for such a long time: two whole hours. It was a luxury that I don’t usually have, because I have children*.

I had this luxury of time and availability thanks to a fully charged cell phone, and the fact that I was sitting at a client’s home office (client was not home) busily resurrecting his computer, a task that required little brain power but lots of patience while I waited for various applications to reinstall. So there I was, reformatting a hard drive and chatting with Dad.

Dad told me he no longer believes in God, in heaven– in religion in general. He thinks it’s all made up in the mind of man (humankind, folks, not male folk). He see hypocrisy in all things religious, he is cynical about our country’s government, and is disillusioned and weary about life.

Now I know that religion is something that is a great comfort and source of strength and resolve among the faithful. It seems really odd to me that in the end stages of life, someone who’d been so steadily faithful would lose all faith in God.

Being non-religious myself, I’ve nevertheless continued to hedge my bets. I mean, there’s the argument that if there’s no god, and you believe in God anyway, you don’t miss out on anything, except perhaps eating bagels in a leisurely manner of a Sunday morning. But if there is a God, and you fail to file the proper faithful paperwork under some religion or another, geez, you could end up in hellfire or whatever. Which one seems the safer bet??

For myself, I’ve come to what I consider a decent compromise. Live life in a way that basically heeds the rules of most of the religions, avoid the biggies of moral turpitude, and try not to piss off God. If he’s as merciful as some folks say, I should be OK. This works for me, since, I figure that God or no God, I’d probably live this fairly decent life anyway.

But if I were sitting in a trailer, alone, with a low heart rate, pondering mortality and failing to get my butt to a hospital, I think I might just want to say a prayer or two. You know, just in case.

So much for faith. He must have some faith in his ability to keep living, though, since he still is dragging his feet getting together a new will. This is something that I’ve been nagging him about for about three years, ever since he married his current wife. He’d had a will hastily put together just before his cancer surgery, because there was a 50% chance he’d not make it out of the surgery alive. This will became invalid when he got married.

He claims that he and his wife have a verbal agreement about who gets what. I told him that’s worth absolutely bupkis in the eyes of the law, and if he wants to leave his home and all his assets, eventually, to his current wife’s children, then he need not worry about getting together a new will. But if he has any interest at all in passing his stuff on to me and my brother (and even my estranged half-sister whom I’ve never met) then he needs to get something put together, and soon.

Because one thing I know for certain is that you cannot write your will in the afterlife.

*(Those of you out there who spend large quantities of time caring for kids know exactly what I mean, but the rest of the world might be confused as to why being a mother might mean a lack of availability for long and serious telephone discussions. There is well-documented evidence that when a mother wants to have a phone conversation, she needs to conceal this fact from her children, because the placing of a telephone to the ear of a mother immediately triggers a need for her children to whine and beg for attention as if they never ever got a single moment of love and affection before. As a matter of fact, I had to stop working on this post for the same reason, and I came back to it after a long while.)

I really miss this cat. Still missing. It’s been a full week. I wasn’t going to share this video, because I think I look really dorky. But anyway. It shows you the kind of thing Luna used to do to me.

I can’t believe how sad I am, and angry, that my evil, biting, scratching cat has run away. She runs out the door often, even though I try to keep her in, so I didn’t worry much when she zoomed through my legs and out into the garden on Friday. I called for her Friday evening — usually she runs back into the house when I call for her.

In the above picture, she’s looking out the window, plotting ways to escape her confinement.

Saturday morning, I was sure she’d be looking for breakfast. But no Luna. Alas, I’ve called and called for her, and she has not shown up.
Now it’s Sunday. Another night has passed, with no sign of her.  We just put up LOST CAT signs all around our block, hoping that maybe someone has taken her in thinking she is a stray, or at least has seen her terrorizing the local wild bird population. C tells me now I should just be patient.

I haven’t been bitten by her since Friday morning. I miss her terribly.

FACTS that are making my mind awfully full. I’m the kid raising her hand in the back row asking, “May I please be excused? My mind is full.”

One of my best friends is in the hospital, recovering from surgery. What they removed was not a benign cyst at all, it was cancerous. A rare one that they’re not sure how to treat, but surgery was certainly the first step, and she is recovering. I am really sad, and angry that this is happening to my friend, and I feel very powerless to help.

Meanwhile, a cargo ship hit the Bay Bridge, 58,000 gallons of fuel into San Francisco Bay not too long ago. I’m powerless to help.

Within the last couple days, a typhoon / cyclone in Singapore Bangladesh claimed the lives of more than 1500 people. Can’t do anything about that either.

I have a proposal to write, that was due yesterday, but didn’t get to finish because my grandmother in law apparently thinks I’m a free taxi service and calls me at random asking for rides… right now? Not powerless in this situation, just frustrated. I do not usually work when my gals are with me, so how will I get this proposal written?

My mom wants me to pop on over to the Italian Market (30-40 min car ride to south philly from where I live) in order to pick up a few christmas gifts for friends of hers, and some fresh pasta. Uh, in my copious free time.

There are way more dirty articles of clothing here in my home than clean ones. Gah.

My daughter wants me to take her to a nature center this afternoon. Sure hon, just as soon as we get back from the Italian Market?
My other daughter’s friends want to come for a playdate today, but my house is such an embarrasing heap of dirty things that I can’t bear the thought of their mom seeing it. Sorry honey.

The 100-days-of-flowers bulb assortment I bought sits on my front porch, and I don’t know when I’ll plant it or even WHERE I’ll plant it. Guess those bulbs will just sit another week. Hope it doesn’t freeze yet out there.

My yard and other outdoor spaces are in bad need of raking, but I don’t even have a rake because someone made off with ours. Maybe I can get a rake in the Italian Market.

I have two clients who require phone calls from me today. One is someone whose laptop I was supposed to have worked on sometime in the last month when it was sitting up in my office, forgotten and ignored. The other is someone who bought his computer from me over a year ago, and it’s now giving him some horrible error message and not starting up anymore.

My gutters REALLY need to be cleaned out. This is something that I can do, but it requires wriggling out the attic window onto the flat roof.

The cat litter boxes in the basement are so bad, that half my readers will want to figure out where I live and call the ASPCA and report me as a bad cat owner. Plus my wild, evil cat was out all night and she is still not back.

Plus, Swistle is going through her blog and deleting a ton of things that might offend her unreasonable and obnoxious relatives. Which is her right, but is so sad to me… such a good blogger, having to censor herself. Bleh!

I guess you could say I am a bit overwhelmed.

As jumbled as this post is, so many things of different weights roiling around together, that is how my mind is. Just not in a very effective mood, not an ideal way to be when you have a lot to do, people to call, proposal to write, friends to think of, and gutters to clean.

And now for something completely different…