And Put My Mittens on a String

I couldn't find my socks before leaving for work. Monday is a thirteen hour day and Tuesday is an eleven hour day so my ability to deal with frustration is pretty low. Today I stood in the middle of the living room and announced that if it was going to be that way, I was going out without wearing socks with my shoes. Goddamit.

Luckily the Spousal Unit and our houseguest talked me down and convinced me that looking like a stinky-footed dork was not a way of proving anything except my failure to master the underwear drawer.

Just confiscate my adulthood credentials. Really. It's not like I'm using them anyway.

Maybe this birthing babies thing isn't for me

Last night we watched Swimming Upstream, a documentary that shows a year in the life of a lesbian couple who plan and have a baby together. It's a good documentary, although the theme music is kinda lesbian.

There's a lot of drama that leads up to the birth (breech presentation, C-section) and you think that's the end of it. But then their baby has a health problem. One that is potentially very serious. One minute they're sighing in relief at being done with pregnancy and the C-section and the next minute the second Mom is weeping on a friend's shoulder while the birth Mom is still fuzzy from the drugs and coming to grips that their baby is about to be whisked off to the ICU.

Looking at their shocked faces, it suddenly occurred to me that despite all the tests, all the monitoring and all our modern technological wonders...THERE'S STILL A CHANCE YOUR BABY COULD HAVE SERIOUS PROBLEMS THAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT UNTIL IT'S BORN.

I managed to gasp this out to the Spousal Unit. Who looked at me kindly and gently said, "Well yes. It can happen."

I know I'm acting like an idiot. But considering pregnancy is causing the selective memory to kick in and when it stops being selective and I'm reminded of all that can go wrong, I take a deep sickened breath. How do people stand this for nine months?

Treasures found

I've been working on a Flylady 27-Day Room Rescue for our basement. The idea is that you work on your worst room for twenty-seven days, five minutes per day and certainly our basement has qualified.

I'm about two and a half weeks in and it's great. It's made a BIG difference in that room. But this weekend it wasn't about clearing the clutter, it was about finding something very important to me. I located a box that contained all of my old bead projects, starting from when I first began doing beadwork in 1993.

Creative projects are a type of diary. I can handle these gleaming necklaces and bracelets and amulet bags and I can remember exactly what I was thinking when I created the project and what obstacles I ran into and how I might do it differently today. I've got to take some pictures and post them. But not tonight.

Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back.

I read today in the Cape Cod Times that various Cape organizations are donating money to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. This bit caught my eye,

The Catania Hospitality Group, owners of the Dan'l Webster Inn and Hearth 'n Kettle Restaurants, plans to host a fundraiser on Tuesday. The Catania Group will donate 10 percent of every guest's dining check to the Red Cross Hurricane Relief Fund.

For those of you not up on Cape businesses, Catania Hospitality Group includes Daniel Webster Inn, Hearth'nKettle and theCape Codder Resort and Spa.

Every little bit helps, but 10% from what is being presented as a "fundraiser"? What a laugh. Don't participate in their bogus PR effort. Write a check directly to an appropriate charity instead.

Anything I could write just seems so petty and trivial compared to the disaster in the southeast United States. I'll post some links from people who are there instead.

The Interdictor is writing from a datacenter in New Orleans that still has power and an internet connection.

Trekking Bob is writing from Mississippi