Off to Stratford

Anybody who lives in this (eastern Great Lakes) neck of the woods has probably heard of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. It's hard to miss the aggressive advertising (Canada wants your tourist dollars!), and the hokeyness of the fact that the town really is named Stratford, and really is on the Avon river. (Lots of places in Canada are like that, actually; named for the old country by homesick immigrants.) Although the quality of the theatre productions is excellent -- or so I've been told; I've never seen one -- Stratford in summer is a tourist trap of the highest order. Where else could a simple diner-class restaurant call itself "The Elizabethan" and serve spaghetti with meat sauce and salad (on the same plate!) as the lunch special and be loved by budget-minded theatre-goers?

Stratford in summer is definitely avoidable. The theater season lasts from late April to late October. The streets are crowded, hotel rooms cost big bucks, parking is hard to come by. And then there's January! In January, Stratford is a pretty, snow covered small town. Hotel rooms are half price, even the premium ones like in Bentley's Annex. Not every interesting little shop is open, but the ones that are are nearly deserted. You can hold a conversation with the proprietor, if you like. The posh, expensive restaurants shut down for the winter, but there are wonderful options like Bentley's proper, or Fellini's, or York Street Kitchen. Roger and I have been going there for at least a long weekend every January since the winter of 1999. And we leave tomorrow!!

FLU!

I hate it! I thought I was exhausted before, but then flu hit our household, and I haven't been able to do ANYTHING for 48 hours. Just typing this is exhausting. I'll be back when we're better.

Christmas makes you feel emotional ....

...and it also makes you really tired! I've been working on this post for a week; the original opening paragraph is below...

..It may bring parties or thoughts devotional.
Whatever happens or what may be
Here is what Christmastime means to me...

This is the practically unknown opening verse to a rather well-known song. Big round of applause to anybody who figures out which one before I tell you at the end! (And please let me know in the comments if you did.) I learned it in the eighth grade in glorious SSA harmony, and sang with a hand-picked small group at the school Christmas concert. I'm very grateful that forty years later my children's school still has Christmas concerts, not "holiday" or "winter" concerts. (Well, the "winter" concert is in February.) The choir director actually uses a great deal of religious music year-round; it's just that half or more of it is in languages other than English, and therefore has an "educational" purpose. The band director, who has an easier time because there are no words, does things like use the Mannheim Steamroller arrangement of Patapan, (what could be more secular than Mannheim Steamroller?), and only a few of us hear "Thus the men of olden days came the King of Kings to praise..."

I am always affected by music, and my first realization that this year Christmas was making me feel emotional was a tendency to tears every time I heard I'll Be Home for Christmas because all my kids were really going to be home.

As I mentioned to my kids several times during the week, no Christmas is perfect, but this one rated 99 and 44/100! (For you young'ns, that was the reputed purity of Ivory soap.) I had everything well enough under control to go out for a relaxed lunch with my daughters and SIL on Christmas Eve. This was a present I had specifically asked for, and since Rosie and Anthony had to head home on the 26th, the 24th was the best time. It was wonderful! We went to a funky local coffeehouse/cafe with a full menu and eclectic decor, which was as empty as I've ever seen it at lunchtime. I guess not everybody had it as together as we did :-)

That evening we had our traditional "pig leg" dinner. We buy a country ham from Burger's, and the first time Rosie saw one -- she was about five -- she said "That looks like a pig leg!" So grocery store ham is just ham, but the special holiday hams are "pig leg." I buy it cooked, and heat it on top of frozen green beans, and they are the most-eaten vegetable I ever serve. This year I did five pounds (of beans!; more like 15 of ham), and had a few leftovers. But the consensus was to go back to four pounds, so that the flavor would be stronger. As long as they don't fight over them!

After dinner we had a fire in the fireplace, evening prayers, and readings (all the way from the Grinch to the Gospel of Luke), and then we hung our stockings. The mantel barely can hold 14, if you put one on each end. We need a bigger fireplace (and house!). Katie and I went of to sing in the choir for 10 PM mass, the babies were put to bed, and everybody else went to work on putting the presents under the tree. It took close to two hours, and some nifty stacking by Arwen, to get them all fitted in. Then everybody turned in to get as much sleep as possible.

Christmas morning was stockings and prayers starting at 7:30, breakfast at 8 (grapefruit, sausage links, scrambled eggs, and Roger's amazing home-made sticky buns -- he got up at 6!), 9:30 mass for all, and then the presents. As Arwen mentioned on her blog, we open one present at a time. The presents are picked out in age rotation, youngest to oldest, and the only rule is that you can't pick something that's for you. (We relaxed that rule once, years ago when Katie was a toddler, because she kept picking out presents for herself. It took us a couple of rounds to realize that although she couldn't read, she could recognize her first initial! :-D )

Although one present at a time is slow -- almost three hours this year -- it gives everybody the most time to enjoy seeing others enjoy. My favorite mental picture from this year is really-cool-almost-fifteen Tommy bouncing up off the couch to hug his aunt and uncle when he realized that they'd bought him access to a much-desired online computer game. I suppose when we get up to 20 grandchildren, as Rosie's in-laws will do this year, we might have to change the system, but I'll miss it!

After Arwen and Bryan had departed to do Christmas again with Camilla's other grandparents, the rest of us lazed around, cleaned up the living room (which was a mess despite the three black trash bags of paper, tags, etc. we had filled while unwrapping), and eventually ate the tamales I made earlier in the month. In the evening we discovered that my sister-in-law, who is a bit of a movie buff, had never seen the original National Treasure, so we watched that. And then we dragged our weary selves to bed.

Most Christmas posts would end here, but since we are old-fashioned sticklers who observe the twelve days I'll give skating highlights. Day 2 -- Rosie, Anthony, and Daniel returned home. I got crabby (sorry, family) because routine chores like laundry were piling up, and nobody wanted to pitch in. Day 3 -- the female contingent went to see Enchanted. I've now been to it three times, and all I can say is GO!

Day 4 my brother and SIL departed for home in Pennsylvania. They had originally planned to stay another day, but my brother, who is a hunter, hadn't gotten his deer yet, so he wanted to be able to hunt on Saturday. On the same day Tommy's friend "Evan" arrived. Evan is also from Pennsylvania, and he and Tommy actually became friends on an online forum, but over the past year we've met up at places like state parks and confirmed that neither he nor we are whackos, so he flew out for a couple of days over break.

Evan is great, but his presence meant that for the next few days Tommy did most of his sleeping in the daytime .. they were on the computer all night. And since computer-geek George was hanging out with them AND with his local pals... much daytime snoozing!

Days 5 and 6, in addition to snoozing boys, included housecleaning, mass on Sunday, and a lot of granddaughter time. Somewhere in there most everybody but me went to see National Treasure 2. I would have enjoyed it, but stayed with Camilla so Arwen and Bryan could go together. I'll see it on video, most likely.

Day 7 was a lot of cooking. Ever since most of our kids can remember we've hosted a kid-and-teen-friendly New Year's Eve party, consisting of some games, singing the doxology on the front porch at midnight, and MOUNTAINS of food. This year I took the radical step of changing the menu, and it was a good idea. There were still lots of leftovers, but they were different leftovers. And nobody minded too much, since I left in the stick pepperoni and lots of olives! We had 29 people, only 5 of whom were over 21!

New Year's Day -- Christmas Day 8 -- is also the feast of Mary, Mother of God. So we stirred out the whole crew (some of whom had had only two or three hours of sleep) and attended 9:30 AM mass. Then almost everybody went back to bed! And in the afternoon Arwen, Bryan and Camilla headed home.

Day 9 was a hard and crazy one. Roger and Tommy headed out early in the morning to drop George and Evan at two different airports, with a stop to see Rosie and Daniel in the middle. While they were gone, we got 6 to 8 inches of snow in about 3 hours. This is one of the "benefits" of living "near a Great Lake" (within walking distance, actually) -- you sometimes get "lake effect" snow. I had to go out during the snow, and it looked and drove like a blizzard all the way, but by the time Roger returned it was sunny and clear. Ah, Michigan!

Days 10. 11, and 12 were more-or-less normal household routine, except that Maggie, Katie, and Tommy were all home instead of at school or college. I spent as much time as possible sitting and reading near the Christmas tree, since I knew it would soon be gone. And Camilla and her parents returned on Saturday, because there was a surprise 85th birthday party for Bryan's grandfather.

Sunday was the feast of the Epiphany of Our Lord. The choir sang at 11:30 mass. One of the things I love about Epiphany is that you usually get to sing ALL the verses of carols like We Three Kings, instead of just the familiar verses of many Christmas carols. (I have a garbage-can memory, and know all the verses to everything, almost, or at least my kids think so.) And so our Christmas season came to an end.

Actually, Monday should have been called the 13th day, with all the negative connotations of that number. I spent twelve hours taking down the tree and other decorations. No wonder I'm exhausted!

(The song is Silver Bells. I also know all kinds of rarely-heard little echo bits, which I will spare you!!)

Emmanuel!

"O Emmanuel, king and lawgiver, desire of the nations, Savior of all people, come and set us free, Lord our God."

So this is the last of the O Antiphons. Everybody, probably, has heard the Advent carol O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. And this antiphon is its origin. It pretty much sums up what the antiphons have been leading us to pray for days -- You, who have all these characteristics, and merit all these titles, come! Because we are eagerly awaiting that awe-inspiring mystery God-with-us!

(This is probably my last post until Thursday or so, so to all of you --and you know who you are!-- have a blessed and happy Christmas day, full of love and joy!)

King and Keystone

" O King of all the nations, the only joy of every human heart: O Keystone of the mighty arch of man, come and save the creature you fashioned from the dust."

The O antiphons are coming to an end! Every year when they start, and it's clear that Christmas is soon, seven of them still sounds like a large number, that will take a while to get through. But this is number six. And I am "not ready". This means that the wrapping is not all done, and a few more things should be bought, to fill in holes in my list that I didn't realize I had.

But that's my Martha side coming out. The antiphon doesn't refer to "the day everything has to be done by." George came home last night, a day earlier than I expected him! (Apparently the whole rest of the family was in on it.) And even though he was early, and everything wasn't ready (like making Tommy clear his stuff off George's bed) I was overjoyed to see him. How much more should I welcome "the only joy of every human heart"!

Radiant Dawn

" O Radiant Dawn, splendor of eternal light, sun of justice: come, shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death."

The references to "darkness and the shadow of death" in yesterday and today's antiphons are quotes, from the prayer of Zechariah after the birth of John the Baptist. (It's found in Luke 1:68-79.) In the translation I know best, the end of it goes:

In the tender compassion of our God
The dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
And to guide our feet into the way of peace.

In the last few days I've learned about a number of people who are literally living "in the shadow of death" -- the son of a friend who has melanoma on his liver (discovered through an X-ray for pneumonia!), an elderly friend who's been on oxygen for years but now can't keep his blood levels up, a woman whose elderly father (who lived with her) just died who has such an intense job that she has no time to grieve. All of these people know and love God, but that doesn't stop them from bearing the weight of the darkness. But God has tender compassion for all of them, and us, and the "dawn from on high" will break. No wonder we await His coming!

Key of David

"O Key of David, O royal Power of Israel controlling at your will the gate of heaven: come, break down the prison walls of death for those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death; and lead your captive people into freedom."

I had never noticed before I started this posting on the O Antiphons just how much they refer to freedom. I think we all tend to forget, because our lives are so comfortable (especially compared to most people through most of history), how bound we are. I'm bound by customs that have become law in my head, and by my own pre-judgements of things and situations, and by choices I've made in the past, and many other things I'm rarely aware of. Just because there are no chains on my ankles doesn't mean I don't need the Lord to come and set me free!

Flower of Jesse

"O Flower of Jesse's stem, you have been raised up as a sign for all peoples; kings stand silent in your presence; the nations bow down in worship before you. Come, let nothing keep you from coming to our aid."

Wednesday is never my favorite day of the week. I do too many of my least-favorite chores on Wednesday. But if I get them all done, I get to go to the Barnes and Noble cafe, sip a decaf mocha, and read for a while. Fortunately, Christ's coming doesn't depend on my working hard. I just have to be ready to stand silent in his presence.

Lord of Might

"O sacred Lord of ancient Israel, who showed yourself to Moses in the burning bush, who gave him the holy law on Sinai mountain: come, stretch out your mighty hand to set us free."

The title I gave this post is a phrase from O Come, O Come Emmanuel. Because I've known that longest, I tend to remember the antiphons in its phraseology. But it's really more about freedom. I could sure use some strength and freedom these next two days. I have all my regular chores, plus wrapping still to do and a few final decorating touches. And Maggie is even now in an airplane, winging home from her semester in Austria!

I am very excited to see her, but since her best/cheapest flight package was from Chicago -- a six hour drive -- Roger has already left to pick her up, and they won't be home until tomorrow. They'll be stopping to spend the night at Arwen's house, which is almost 2 hours closer to Chicago, and then swinging over in the morning so Maggie can see Rosie and Daniel. So tomorrow afternoon! And George flies in on Saturday. Christmas is coming!!

Wisdom

"O Wisdom, O holy Word of God, You govern all creation with your strong yet tender care. Come and show your people the way to salvation."

Today is something our family has been waiting for all year -- the first of the "O Antiphons". For our family evening prayers (and also some people's personal morning prayer) we use the Liturgy of the Hours, the official daily prayer of the Catholic church. (Bet you thought that was the Rosary! Nope, that's considered a "private devotion", --which is of course how we use the LotH ;-D ) Every day at evening prayer we recite the Magnificat, Mary's song of praise in response to the greeting of Elizabeth. Each day of the liturgical year has its own antiphon, a sentence or so which is traditionally recited between sections of the prayer. We just read them at the start of it.

Some of the antiphons are simply quotes, from Scripture or from the Magnificat itself. But starting on December 17 and running through the 23rd (because evening prayer of Christmas Eve is the start of Christmas), the antiphons are translations of very old (fifth century AD?) Latin ones. The Wikipedia article I linked to above has an excellent analysis. But you've certainly heard them; the verses of O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and many other Advent hymns repeat them.

For our family, the O Antiphons are many things. For the kids (especially when they were younger), they just mean Christmas will be here soon. But for someone like me, who is always struggling to balance the "Mary" and "Martha" parts of Advent, they give a "theme of the day", something to meditate on while running at full tilt. So I'm going to post them here each morning, and with an effort maybe I"ll be able to slow down and prepare my heart.

Shop 'til You Drop! (out of the blogosphere)

Most years I start my Christmas shopping in January. I did, in fact, buy a few items this year. This is all facilitated by two things.
1) Finances. We set aside money each month all year toward the following Christmas. If I see something perfect in August (or January!) money is available to buy it. And we NEVER have post-Christmas debt, because when the money is spent, that's it for this year.
2) Stratford! The Stratford Shakespeare Festival is a summer highlight of this little town in Ontario, about a two-hour drive from us. The town is geared toward tourists and more tourists, with lots of fascinating shops and intriguing restaurants. But the festival only runs from April to October, so many of the hotels have specials designed to attract winter visitors. For the last ten years Roger and I have taken a winter get-away, spending half-price for premium accommodations and doing a little shopping and a lot of nothing. (Double jacuzzi, bottle of bubble bath, two books and two beverages of choice -- bliss!) About one shop in four is closed for the part of winter we're there, but the rest love to see people carrying actual money. And I always get a Christmas present or two for the upcoming year.

Most years I try to do the bulk of my shopping in October and November. Peruse the internet deals, figure out what I'm going to grab at the local mall as soon as the markdowns hit, wait for the major retailers' "$10 off a $50 purchase" coupons. But somehow this year it just slid by.

My excuse is that I got out of the habit last year. George was in boot camp, I was waiting for him to get home for Thanksgiving and gearing toward that. And then he was "rephased" (for lack of ability to do enough pushups fast enough), and I wound up being able to go to New Jersey for the graduation, which set back my shopping another week.

As my children will tell you, I am not a big house-cleaning whiz. Tidiness, yes. I go around every morning and put things back in place, straighten the slipcovers, load the dishwasher. But dusting and vacuuming, not so much. The only time I really CLEAN is right before the Thanksgiving/Christmas season, so that I can decorate a clean house. Last year, I decided that something had to give , and cleaning was it. So the shopping got done, a little late. And we had a lovely Christmas in a dirty house.

This year, skipping the cleaning was not an option. The house was a year dirtier. As you read here, Rosie helped me with a couple of rooms while she and Daniel were visiting. We did the downstairs, the rooms we'd use for Thanksgiving. The upstairs rooms were left for me. And I finished the last one on Monday. Christmas cleaning was over!

But despite the Stratford purchases, and a few other things I picked up over the summer, my Christmas shopping was barely begun. I had ideas. (Some things, like new sleep pants all round, are practically set in stone!) But the getting of the stuff -- nope. I had missed the coupons. The markdowns--due to the economy here in Michigan--were still there, and deep.The internet sites were offering free shipping. But I had to DO it.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. I have put in 8 hour days. I have not posted here, I have not commented on your blogs, yesterday I didn't even read them! But I'm done. And today I'm hanging out on the computer. Tomorrow -- we get the Christmas tree!

Tamale Update

We prepped and assembled about 10 dozen in four hours, not counting steaming time. (They need to steam for a couple of hours after assembly.) So I've got plenty for Christmas, AND a couple of bags for the freezer. Easy dinners, hurrah!

By the way, Andrea says she distinctly remembers that our first tamale day was in my not-yet-remodeled kitchen. Since the remodeling was done in the summer of 1993, that means this is at least our 15th year doing them. I'd say that definitely qualifies as a tradition!

Tamale Day

What do you have for Christmas dinner? In some families it's set in stone. In some families it changes every year. In our family, though the side dishes may vary, the main event is tamales.

Some of you may be thinking "I didn't know she was Hispanic!" Well, I'm a nice German-Scottish girl from Pennsylvania, and my husband is a British mixture from the Midwest. But we know good food when we taste it!

One of my good friends (also of British extraction) grew up in a small town in Arizona. Two doors down was a Mexican-American family with kids about the same ages. "Andrea" remembers watching tamale making from very early on, and by the time she was in middle school. she was helping. (For any of you who don't know, tamale-making is a somewhat tedious process of preparing seasoned meat, masa dough, and softened cornhusks. Then you smear some dough on a cornhusk, add meat, roll, wrap and repeat. It is much more fun when several people talk while they work -- kind of on the quilting-bee principle.)

About fifteen years ago Andrea, who had at that time been living in Michigan for a number of years, got homesick for tamales. She remembered enough to get a close approximation, and has been tweaking the recipe ever since. But she also remembered the camaraderie of tamale-making, and asked me if I'd like to help her make a batch. We were hooked!

So for the last 13 or 14 years, one day in December has been set aside as tamale day. (They freeze beautifully.) We've gotten better at pre-prep, so it's not as tiring as it used to be. And the smell of steaming tamales has no equal. And today's the day!

(For those of you who wonder -- yes, the tamales taste authentic. We knew that for sure eight or so years ago, when one of Andrea's cousins was hosting a Mexican exchange student who hated it here. Too cold, weird food, etc., etc. But when Andrea gave him a couple of tamales, he proclaimed them "Just like abuela's!" The ultimate compliment.)

Template Time

Now that I don't "have to" post every day, I'm having fun messing with the template. Eventually I'll get it the way I want, but you'll probably see lots of changes along the way. And so much cheaper than redecorating the house!

Eight Random Things

Well, it appears NaBloPoMo is going to go out, not exactly with a whimper, but not with a bang, either. I have not finished my series of posts about the life histories of my children (Mom's eye view), I have not scanned the "dancing girls" or " Katie the pirate" pictures, and I have not won any prizes, except maybe a little extra time with my granddaughter (my prize for consistent comments over at Arwen's blog), and that's only because Bryan has to travel for work, so Camilla and Arwen are coming to stay here.

But I have done what I set out to do when I signed up for this: put at least something here every day for a month. I wasn't exactly sure I had the resolve to do this. I did it! (With apologies for the days like yesterday, which netted me a [since deleted] comment-spam plugging insurance rate comparisons!) I have gained some new readers -- Hi down there in Lone Star territory! -- and some new respect for people who do stuff like this for a living. And I have gained an understanding that I can blog regularly and I will blog regularly, just not every day (at least until next November.) Heck, maybe I'll get inspired and start messing with my template (I know it's not the easiest to read.) And the kid posts and the pictures are coming!!

But today I'm going to do this meme, which Arwen did yesterday, so here are the rules.

Rules: Once tagged, you're supposed to link to the person who tagged you. Then, post the rules before your list and list 8 random things about yourself. At the end of the post, tag and link to 8 other people and then leave them a comment telling them they've been tagged.

1) I'm definitely more rule-oriented than most, but I'm doing this without being tagged and without tagging anybody. So sue me!

2) As I said in Arwen's comments,I can write upside-down, backwards, or upside-down and backwards at almost the speed I write regularly. In legible cursive!! (I think this indicates a twisted mind .....)

3) I like to wear shawls, ponchos, and wraps. I think this started when I was in elementary school. My mom had gone back to teaching, and my dad got her a plaid poncho to put over her coat for winter playground duty. It wasn't really her style, so I started wearing it, and still have it. For many years my winter "uniform" has been pants, a turtleneck, and a sweater or shawl. I'm wearing one right now, in blue and burgundy. We will see how this costume works with hot flashes this winter!

4) I'm a big fan of hard cider. Strongbow on tap if I can get it, but Woodchuck in a bottle will do in a pinch, especially the Granny Smith. This is fascinating to me, as I never met a beer I didn't loathe!

5) Our household has seven working computers, more if George and Maggie are home. Two networks, wired and wireless. And never mind when the married kids bring theirs. Did I tell you my husband is a computer consultant?

6) Despite those seven computers, I had to stop for a couple of hours in the middle of writing this post so that stuff could be done on "my" computer. I couldn't log in from anywhere else, because heaven help me if I mess with anybody else's settings or log ins. Did I mention my husband is a computer consultant? :-D

7) I have yet to use a name for my husband on this blog, because I thought that if you Googled his first name plus mine and Arwen's you'd get a couple of news articles about our family I know are out there. But apparently not. So from now on I will use his name, which is Roger.

8) I like to do my cooking in stages. Right now I have time to finish this because I made a turkey pot-pie this morning, shoved it in the fridge all day, and now it's in the oven and dinner will be ready in an hour. Lovely!

If you want to do this meme, feel free! You can even use my comments if you don't have a blog of your own. And I'd love to know if you are doing it at your blog.

Happy Last Day of NaBloPoMo, and see you soon!!

Insurance

No, this doesn't have anything to do with my rant on health insurance. It's just a stopgap post, in case I don't get back here to scan and post pictures... my NaBloPoMo insurance!

Katie # 2 -- Stick to your Guns

One of the reasons it was so important for Katie to keep her glasses on was the great discrepancy between the vision in her good eye versus her dermoid eye. The minute she got glasses it was easy for anybody to tell that, just by looking through her lenses -- the right eye was essentially window glass, but the left eye tipped anything you looked at through it by about thirty degrees. How Dr. O could correctly choose her prescription when she couldn't say anything but "gah!" is beyond me, but he obviously knew what he was doing. But even with glasses, because one eye could see much more easily than the other, she ran the risk of developing amblyopia, in which the good eye takes over and does all the work, and the bad eye essentially goes blind even though everything works. The brain just learns to ignore the "bad" signals.

One-eyed vision has all kinds of ramifications; it means no depth perception, which can make driving impossible. (I loved the test Dr. O had to see if Katie had depth perception. It was a set of pictures [I remember specifically a very ugly bug] which were "stereoed" with the double layer plastic stuff. He would ask Katie to pick something up, and if she tried, that meant binocular vision -- depth perception. Even babies don't try to pick up flat pictures off paper!) Because Katie pulled her glasses off so much, part of her prescription was to have her right eye covered for a certain number of hours each day, forcing the dermoid eye to do all the work. This is usually done with an adhesive eye patch, but Katie (surprise!) HATED having something pasted to her face. So since her glasses were already secured to her head with Croakie and tape, we covered the right lens of her glasses instead. It was a lot easier to make sure her glasses were on than to have her constantly picking at the tape. I do have a picture of "Katie the Pirate" dressed up by her siblings and neighborhood friends. When I get time I will scan it so I can upload it for you to see.

At our very first visit with Dr. O, when Katie was two days old, he mentioned surgery to remove the dermoid. It wouldn't correct her vision, he informed us, but having it removed for cosmetic reasons would save her a lot of grief once she started school. I think he was envisioning what I call the "little kid with glasses" personality -- shy, uncertain, expecting to be teased. We have known a few of these -- one of my cousins, and a good friend of Maggie's, and some others. But the surgery would be costly, and we were between insurances when Katie was born.

[We are some of those people who contribute to the "millions of people with no health care" statistics that get bandied about, especially in election season. When you are self-employed, as my husband was by this time, you simply can't afford one of the low-co-pay, covers-everything policies that most people seem to think they deserve. Sometimes we have been without insurance, but never without health care. We just paid out of pocket. The total cost for a midwife assisted home birth was about two months premiums for the covers-everything-with-maternity-rider policy we had considered.

One of the things probably nobody considers when deciding to self-insure is the medical costs associated with a "major birth defect". We were assured that that's what Katie's dermoid was. Now we have seen major birth defects. One of Rosie's childhood pals was born with no nerves to her intestines. She has been in and out of the hospital so many times her parents have lost track, and finally a couple of years ago received a multi-organ transplant that is letting her be an almost-normal college student. Somewhere in this process she hit the lifetime limit on her parents' insurance (I think it was a million dollars) and since then has had to rely on Medicaid. But a cosmetic defect on an eye is not in that class. If we have to deal with a major defect, I'll take a dermoid.

I also don't mean to put down people with no resources, obviously. It's just that counting people like us in the statistics is cheating.]

Since we didn't have the money for the operation upfront, we asked Dr.O if postponing it was possible. He agreed that it was, and that frankly it was a rare and possibly dangerous thing (since the operation could damage the eyeball to such an extent that Katie might be blind in that eye anyway.) But he still felt that psychologically Katie would be better off having the operation before she went to kindergarten and kids started to tease her. So we kind of left it there.

Meanwhile, stubborn, opinionated, feisty Katie was growing up. She had a very independent turn of mind, and was (and is) quite self-sufficient. Once, due to a head-counting error, (we were giving our five neighbor kids a ride, along with our six) we left three-year-old Katie at church in the after-service coffee hour. When we got home (only about 7 minutes away) and discovered our mistake, we sped back, only to find Katie in conversation with somebody or other. She hadn't even noticed we were gone!

By the time she was four, and we paid one of our last visits to Dr. O, he could see it too. This kid wasn't going to be traumatized by teasing! In fact, she told us that during her first week of kindergarten some little boy said to her, in an obnoxious sort of fashion "What's that funny pink thing on your eye?" Katie looked him in the eye, (you could see this by her stance as she told the story), and gave him the four-year-old version of "It's a dermoid, idiot, want to make something of it?" As far as I know, that was the last time anybody tried teasing her about it.

Katie #1 -- The Eye Has It

Katie arrived on a fall afternoon, in comfortable weather, on neither a hot day like George or a cold one like Maggie. She was as determinedly (pigheadedly??) posterior as George had been, but the birth was relatively easy, because at 5 3/4 pounds she was by more than two pounds the smallest of my children, a little pipsqueak. This earned her the nickname Pippi, and I must say that in sheer individuality of personality she resembles that storied character, though her hair is a lot more manageable :-D

I was a bit worried by her tiny size, which turned out to have been caused by a medical mis-communication. I had my blood drawn at the usual time during my pregnancy, and I was mildly anemic. But the midwives filed the results and forgot to mention them, so I didn't take additional iron supplements, and so Katie didn't grow as much as she might have. She was also the earliest-born of my children, at 38 weeks. (I tend to go more like 41 or 42 weeks.) I think she just wanted to get out and get something to eat. She gained a pound by her ten-day checkup!

But the size worry was minor compared to the worry about her left eye. Shortly after she was born I was holding her, doing the bonding-and-counting-the-fingers-and-toes thing, and when when she opened her eyes I saw a big, red, bump. I asked the midwife about it, and at first she thought I was talking about a broken blood vessel on the white of the eye, which can happen during birth. But this was NOT that! She eventually called a pediatrician she was associated with, who recommended a pediatric ophthalmologist about an hour's drive away. We called, an appointment was made, and two days after giving birth I dressed myself and Katie and a friend drove us to Dr. O's office for the first time.

I can't say enough good things about Dr. O. The very first time I met him, I was sitting in an examining chair holding tiny Katie on my lap. He was very gentle with her, waiting for her to rouse a little before examining her eye. His diagnosis, which he had confirmed by one of his medical school teachers, was an epibulbar dermoid. (Actually, hers is a much brighter pink than the picture, and bigger.) In layman's terms, "epibulbar dermoid" just means "skin on the eyeball". In her prenatal development, a few skin cells that were supposed to be somewhere else grew on her eye instead. It's not dangerous, and the only real problem as Dr. O described to me, is that her cornea, which should be shaped like a slice off a ball, is shaped more like the back of a spoon instead.

This mis-shaping of her eye leads to a very severe astigmatism. The "treatment" for this problem is simply glasses, and Katie got her first pair at five and a half months! They had lenses just a little bigger than nickels, and springlike earpieces that hooked all the way around her ears, and made her look cute as a button. As long as she kept them on, of course!

When we had George after three girls, everyone told us that boys are different from girls -- which is true. What nobody told us is that girls are different from girls, too. Our first three were basically even-tempered, well-behaved, quiet little ladies. Katie is feisty! She didn't like the glasses, and it took her about a week to learn to push them off. We got a sport headband called a Croakie, tailored it to fit her tiny frames, and heaved a sigh of relief. That lasted about another week.

Eventually we wound up wrapping paper medical tape around Katie's head from under the chin to the top of her (luckily still mostly hairless) head and back down, perpendicular to the Croakie. It was odd looking, but it mostly worked. I wish I could show you a picture, but I can't find one. I know Dr. O took one for his files, because he thought it was a great solution to a problem he sees regularly. We called her out little "tape head".

Back tomorrow with Katie part 2!

George # 5 -- USCG SNET

When I posted last June about George's boot camp graduation, George was already in California attending Electronic Technician school. He had been there since ten days after boot camp, (though he managed a four day leave to be home for Christmas), but his school proper started the first week of January. Electronic technician school is one of the longest "A" schools in the Coast Guard. [An "A" school is one where the basics of some "rating" (that's a job description) are taught.] ET A-school is the equivalent of an associates' degree in electronics, without the general courses like English and history that a community college would require.

Although he was there until the end of July, it was not nearly as "traumatic" for me as his mother to have him most of a continent (and three time zones) away as it had been to have him three states away in boot camp. The reason is simple -- the internet. George stays logged in to Instant Messenger pretty much 24/7, and checks his email obsessively, so it was easy to just plop down at the computer and have a little chat -- and believe me, I knew when his lunch break and end of classes worked out to in my time zone! It wasn't quite as good as having him nearby, but it was more communication than I had had with any of his sisters while they were in college.[ Even when they were only 1 1/2 hours away, either I (for Arwen) or they (for Rosie and Maggie) didn't have high speed internet easily available.] So we chatted at least a couple of times a week.

And sometimes we could even do better than that. George and Arwen both have Macbook laptops, which have built in video capability. So they got in the habit of having regular video chats, especially since Camilla was born while George was in boot camp, and he didn't want to miss any more than he needed to of his niece. And eventually he bought us a web-cam as well. I mentioned in my quick post on Saturday that we were going to play Trivial Pursuit with George by video, which was great! But even more fun was watching Camilla get all excited about seeing "Crazy Uncle George", whom she clearly recognizes!

George, of course, is no longer in California. He graduated from ET school the 28th of July, which makes him a SeamaN Electronics Technician (SNET) in the US Coast Guard, hence the cryptic title of this post! He was home on leave for a little over a week, and then his dad and I helped him pack our van and his car "Fang" for the move to his first duty station in Duluth MN. Fang is a little blue 1988 Aries K which I inherited from my mother which George has driven since he got his license. Technically it was the "kids' car", but George loved it and named it -- a tradition in our family -- and had to take it with him, so he paid us for it. He even got a vanity plate that says "USCG ET". (He left off the SN because at the end of December he will be eligible for promotion to Electronics Technician third class -- ET-3.)

One of the privileges of doing well in A-school is the opportunity to have first choice of the available duty assignments. George wasn't top of his class, but he was in the top half, so the Petty Officer in charge of duty selection was very surprised when George chose Duluth. Usually Ninth District (the Great Lakes) assignments get shoved down to the bottom of the class, and several people asked George why he wanted to go where there was so much snow when warmer spots were still available. His answer: "I'd rather have snow up to my armpits than spend another winter where there isn't any!"

Duluth is a beautiful city, set on a hill side where every street has a view of the lake. George found a nice little apartment in a working-class neighborhood not far from the hospital, and his dad and I helped him settle in. He reported to his duty station, and only after a few days found out from some of the other Coasties that his place is in the "Hillside Ghetto". All I can say is that the people who decided that that was a ghetto have obviously never been anywhere near Detroit! One of the first things he did (while we were still there, and we only stayed 24 hours!) was to get broadband installed in his apartment. So we are in constant touch, and are glad to here about how well things are going for him. The guys from his unit hang out together (bowling, or eating out, or "game night"), and his workload is reasonable, except when the guys at _______ (a station about 2 hours away that his unit supports) break something again. But the best thing of all is -- he'll be home for Christmas!!

Basic Post

No energy. Less time. Here you go!