Oh What a Week

So we sold the house in Virginia. On the ides of March, which is pretty funny. And of course it’s a bittersweet event; it is mighty nice to be out from under the thumb of that mortgage, but my daffodils are blooming on the hill, and I bet my tulips are poking up in the front border, and (sob) will she love them like I do? Will she rejoice over my columbines, my catmint, my sea thrift this spring?

It’s time, methinks, to break out our well-worn copy of Miss Rumphius and remind ourselves that we don’t plant flowers just for our own enjoyment. Happy spring, new homeowners, and I hope you enjoy my posies! Here’s what you have to look forward to in April…

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Tulips

And in May…

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Woodpoppy

And in July…

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And in September…

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All right, all right, I’ll stop!

Poetry Friday: “Letters from a Father”

I love this poem by Mona van Duyn and was so happy to find it online, in full, at the Poets.org site. Here’s a taste:

We enjoyed your visit, it was nice of you to bring
the feeder but a terrible waste of your money
for that big bag of feed since we won’t be living
more than a few weeks long.  We can see
them good from where we sit, big ones and little ones
but you know when I farmed I used to like to hunt
and we had many a good meal from pigeons
and quail and pheasant but these birds won’t
be good for nothing and are dirty to have so near
the house.  Mother likes the redbirds though.


Read the rest
. The closing line is a jewel.
 

Heckuva Markup

Hubby just forwarded me this Boing Boing post:


On the Freakonomics blog, Stephen Dubner (co-author of the wonderful
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything) digs into the pricing on generic drugs and finds that the main-street pharmacies mark up their offerings by 975 percent!

Even once you factor in the cost of buying a membership at Costco and
Sam’s Club, the price differences were astounding. Here are the prices
he found at Houston stores for 90 tablets of generic Prozac:

Walgreens: $117

Eckerd: $115

CVS: $115

Sam’s Club: $15

Costco: $12

Those aren’t typos. Walgreens charges $117 for a bottle of the same pills for which Costco charges $12.

Yowza! I’d be interested in seeing the differential for asthma medications (the only prescription meds we buy on a regular basis here).


Click through to Boing Boing
to get the link to the whole post quoted above, which is quite interesting.  A commentor chimes in that Costco does not require membership for pharmacy purchases. Is that correct? I don’t shop at Costco (yet) but I have always heard good things about it (including its corporate policies). I keep meaning to go check out diaper prices there. I’ve been getting them via Amazon Grocery, and with the 15% discount for subscription service, I’m paying 18 cents a diaper. I used to get Target’s store brand for 17 cents per, but the doorstep delivery is totally worth that extra penny, in my book.

Except this time I cut it too close, and the baby is wearing the last diaper in the house, yikes! We are nibbling our nails while waiting for the doorbell to ring this morning…

Of Mice and Moms

When I log into my Typepad account, a little box on the screen says "Remember me," and today I could swear there was a question mark after the words. Remember me? I blog here sometimes? When I am not spending my days glued to the phone because we are finally about to sell our house in Virginia?

Since the house is there, and we are here, the inevitable flurry of last-minute things-that-need-attending-to has resulted in a spate of phone calls to dear and PATIENT and UNDERSTANDING and did I mention AWESOME friends in the old neighborhood. Could you check on this? Could you unlock the door for that? Could you arrange for the removal of a big ole piece of furniture I forgot was still sitting in the garage? Um? Still love me?

In the middle of one of these conversations I was feeling rather humbled by the number of times I’ve had to call upon friends to help in a pinch. Sometimes it seems like we are ALWAYS in a pinch. Jane’s illness, Wonderboy’s many medical adventures, new-baby meals, living without Scott all last summer, packing for the move…sheesh! "Don’t you ever get sick of helping me?" I wailed to fabulous Lisa, friend of friends.

Because Lisa has a heart as big as Texas, she assured me that no, she never gets tired of lending a hand (actually it’s more like both hands, both feet, and a strong back!) and wishes I were still there to need her help all the time. Which is awfully sweet of her. But still, I worry sometimes. Am I "that friend," the  one who is always on the receiving end of the relationship? I mean, sure, I’m fun to talk to. And I suppose my book-junkie tendencies make me a handy person to visit when you want to peruse the latest selections from your favorite homeschooling catalog. But let’s face it. I am seldom the friend who brings you dinner when you need it most, because I am probably scrambling to get my own brood fed. (I am famous for feeding my own children cereal on the night I delivered a new-baby meal to a family in our neighborhood.) And you’ll never call me to help you move furniture. You’ll be too afraid I’ll injure my little wimpy self and you’ll wind up having to run all my errands while I convalesce.

Fred
I was lamenting to Lisa about all this when suddenly it hit me: I know who I am. I am Frederick the Mouse. You know, from the picture book by Leo Lionni. While all the other mice are busy gathering grains and seeds all summer, ole Fred is sitting on a rock, soaking up the sun and the colors. Oh, sure, he might seem like a shirker, but really he’s a poet. In the winter, when all is gray and dreary, it will be Frederick who brings color and warmth to the mouse den by spinning tales and chanting poems. And then all the other mice will love him and be so glad he sat on that rock all summer while they did all the physical labor.

The irony here is that Frederick has always irritated me a bit. I mean, no matter how many dinners my wonderful friends may bring me, I do still work my tail off—like any mother of little ones—taking care of my younguns, my husband, my home. Come on, Freddy, I used to think, if I can raise babies and write novels at the same time, surely you can lug a few grains of wheat to the nest while you’re marveling at how many shades of gold there are between sun and meadow. Poets can think while they work, you know. I’ve teased out many a metaphor while scrubbing the kitchen floor. You’re giving artists a bad name, little mouse.

But I am beginning to wonder if the difference between Frederick and me isn’t just a matter of scale. Of course I know I’ve had some darn good excuses for shouldering less than my full share of the grain harvest; and also I know that this is just a season of my life (albeit a long one), and hopefully a day will come when I’m the friend everyone calls in a pinch. Still, it brings a chagrined smile to my face. This is what I get for my years of scoffing at a beloved and classic picture-book character. Sorry about throwing all those stones, Frederick. I bet you can come up with a brilliant poem about how the sunlight glints off the shards of my glass house.

Saturday Open Thread: Your Awesomest Parties

My girls had a blast at a fabulous birthday party this afternoon, a backyard Hawaiian luau thrown by a mom I admire enormously, and not just for her awesome party planning skills. Me, I’m not so great with the parties. I did throw Jane a pretty cool Little House-themed party for her sixth birthday—with vanity cakes and a reenactment of the "old crab" scene from Plum Creek, with itty bitty Rose as the cutest little crabby grabby crawdad you ever did see—but that’s about it. I don’t even want to talk about the Greek myth party that Jane planned for months, the one that never happened because we couldn’t get the Perseus family and the Hera family together on the same day.

Nope, event planning is not so much my specialty.

I am therefore all the more in awe of mums with a talent for making a child’s birthday festive and special—without excessive glitz or expense. I’m betting a lot of you out there have the gift. Lay it on me: what are the best parties you’ve thrown for your kids?

(And Erica? That pork was to die for.)

The Wait and the Wonder

Moreena’s most recent post at The Wait and the Wonder cut me to the heart. After spending the last three months in a suspenseful wait for the phone call that would mean a new liver for her daughter Annika, she just found out that Anni’s transplant team hasn’t yet bumped her to active status on the wait list.

…when we got that letter a few days ago, the one intended to let
us know about the new patient line at UNOS, but shockingly telling us
also, by the way, that a huge part of the way we had viewed
the world for the past 3 months was simply wrong, we were right back to
the feeling we had 5 1/2 years ago. The feeling that we had been
walking through the world upside-down, and no one had bothered to tell
us.

…We knew that Anni’s surgeon still had serious reservations about
transplanting her, given her history. We couldn’t help but wonder if
Annika’s inactive status meant that Chicago had given up on her, and
neglected to mention their decision to us.

In short, we had absolutely no idea what was going on. We didn’t
have a clue about what is easily the most important issue in our lives
together.

"Is it us?" Moreena wonders. "Or does every parent go through these horrible moments, wondering
whether or not anyone even bothers listening to their questions."

Oh, Moreena, it isn’t just you! Your post smacked me right back to Wonderboy’s infancy, when the geneticists were running a bigtime takes-a-month-for-results chromosome study to determine whether there was some genetic syndrome which tied together all his various medical problems. He was three months old, and then he was four months old, and we were waiting, waiting, for that call.

I had, of course, Googled his collection of abnormalities. About ten different websites told me that my son had four of the five primary markers, and several more of the secondary markers, of a pretty scary condition called Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome, also known as gigantism. I tried to be patient, giving the doctors time to complete their tests, knowing they would call me as soon as there was a firm diagnosis. I knew, too, that they had no idea I was sitting by the phone chewing my nails off over Beckwith-Wiedemann. They didn’t want to scare me with possibilities that might not even be in the picture, and how were they to know I’d pieced together the clues from their pointed questions and Wonderboy’s symptoms? 

But the days, the weeks, ticked slowly by, and the waiting was agony. The waiting is always agony. I can handle a bad diagnosis better, honestly, than I can handle not knowing. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and I called the geneticist. "Are you suspecting Beckwith-Wiedemann?" I blurted. The voice on the other end of the phone stammered in obvious surprise.

"We were," said the doctor, sounding shocked I’d even heard of the syndrome, "but we ruled it out two weeks ago."

Two weeks ago. Two weeks of our lives spent wondering, praying, mentally preparing ourselves, trying to be normal and sunny with our other children but all the time haunted by the back-of-the-mind fears that want to strongarm their way to the front of the mind and dominate everything.

Two weeks, it turned out, during which we need not have worried about that particular spectre, because the doctors had already crossed it off the list.

Months later, I had the honor of being the guest speaker at a large assembly of doctors at that same hospital. It was an incredible experience, and I should maybe write more about it in another post. But one of the best things about it was that it gave me the opportunity to say something I’d wanted to say for years. The world has changed, and doctors are going to have to adjust to a new playing field. They have to know that their patients (or their patients’ parents) are going to go straight to Google when they walk out of the office. We have more access to medical information now, and it’s hard to figure out which sources are reliable and which ones apply to your specific case, and it’s easy to jump to the wrong conclusions or assume a worse diagnosis than is really the case. I’m not saying it’s necessarily a good idea to try to do your own research, but a lot of us are going to do it anyway. How can we not try? Sometimes it’s a parent’s hunch that saves a child’s life. The parent has a lot more invested in "the case" than the doctors do, and the questions consume that parent’s life in a way far more raw and pressing than even the most ardent or compassionate professional curiosity.

In the same way, a parent can’t help but think nonstop about when The Call will come, when there is a life-affecting phone call expected. My two weeks of waiting for the call that might put a name on what was wrong with my son were nothing compared to the three months Moreena has spent waiting for the call that means her little girl gets another shot at survival.

In short, we had absolutely no idea what was going on. We didn’t
have a clue about what is easily the most important issue in our lives
together.

Those are heart-piercing words. I am spitting mad on Moreena’s behalf today; I can’t help it; I resent the notion of a medical team knowing more about a family’s reality than the family itself. The wait is hard enough. At the very least, a mother deserves to know what she is waiting for.

Unabridged Martha and Charlotte at FUN Books

The always delightful Nancy of FUN Books—one of my favorite homeschooling resource suppliers—has let me know that she has copies of all my unabridged Martha and Charlotte books in stock, except for The Road from Roxbury. That’s FUN as in Family Unschooling Network, and if you haven’t explored their collection of fun educational materials, you are in for a treat.

("What do you mean, unabridged?" Explanation here and here.)