bearing blog

bearing blog


bear – ing n 1  the manner in which one comports oneself;  2  the act, power, or time of bringing forth offspring or fruit; 3 a machine part in which another part turns [a journal ~];  4  pl comprehension of one’s position, environment, or situation;   5  the act of moving while supporting the weight of something [the ~ of the cross].

  • Collision of housekeeping standards, plus update.

    Mark’s parents are taking care of our boys at our house while he and I keep vigil at the hospital with our post-appendix-rupture daughter.

    This is wonderful and something we are grateful for. This also leads to exchanges like the following:

    MARK’S MOM: Erin, what do you use to wipe up the bathroom floor?

    ME: What do you mean?

    MARK’S MOM: I just want to wipe up the floor.

    ME (alarmed): Why? Did someone spill something?

    MARK’S MOM: No…

    (Pause while we stare at each other uncomprehendingly for a moment)

    + + +

    The 7-year-old is doing well this morning. We hit a lot of milestones yesterday, and the whole day felt wonderfully positive until after dinner (she ate dinner! That she asked for and selected herself!).

    Later that evening she had a routine nursing-care event that turned out to be much more unpleasant for her than either of us or any of the nurses on duty expected or had warned her about, and she accused us of lying about it, became recalcitrant, and refused to take her pain meds for the rest of the night.

    But this morning she appeared to understand that in order to go home, she has to drink the amount of fluids we tell her to drink (even if she does not feel like drinking any of the things we offer and cannot think of something else to ask for) and she has to eat meals (even if she is not hungry and none of the choices sound appealing) and she has to go to the bathroom (even if she is tired) and she has to take the pills we tell her to take (even if she thinks she is better without them).

    Mark’s mom has come in to visit this morning to help her feel more willing to do all those things. There is no substitute for Grandma there, let me tell you.

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  • Big-person questions.

    Yesterday morning my daughter, who was sitting in a wheelchair next to her IV pole, looked across the rumpled hospital bed at me and asked, with a nearly expressionless face, “Is this the kind of sickness that can make me… that can make people… die?”

    I said: “When people have an appendix that gets as sick as yours did, if they don’t get the surgery you had, then yes, they do sometimes die. You were very, very sick before your surgery. But we took you to the hospital, and the radiologist figured out what was wrong, and right away you went into surgery, so you are going to get better. Almost everyone gets better after they have the surgery you had. And this is a very good hospital.”

    She thought about that for a while.

    I said: “Were you worried about that?”

    “Yes.”

    “I’m glad you asked me about it so I could answer you.”

    She looked back at me with almost no expression on her face. There had been no hint of weeping or of anger or of anything else.

    Then she said: “Why does God make some people get sick?”

    My first thought was: Am I living in some kind of schlocky TV show where children get sick and ask “Why does God make people get sick?”

    And then I thought, I just got handed a major Catholic-parent pop quiz. Better get this one right.

    So I said something I keep in my pocket to buy myself time:

    “That is a question that many very smart people have been talking about and discussing for a very long time. It is one of the most important questions that people have ever come up with. So I am glad you are thinking about it, because everyone has to ask it eventually.”

    And then I said:

    “Some people think that it isn’t God who makes people get sick. They have the idea that it was when original sin came into the world, that sickness and suffering came into the world with it.”

    She looked at me expressionlessly.

    I continued: “And other people say that God lets some people get sick so that all of us can learn how to be compassionate and kind to each other. By helping the people who are suffering.”

    She nodded — not in a “yes, I agree with you” way, nor in a “That makes sense, Mom” kind of way, but in a “That’s enough out of you” way. She looked down into her lap.

    I waited a moment and then I added, “That really is an important question. People have been talking and wondering about the answer to that since before Jesus was born, even. It’s in the book of Job.”

    She asked to be put back in her bed. I helped get her in — she is able to scoot herself around a little bit, and I am able to lift her a little bit, so together we can do it — and soon she dropped off to sleep.

    + + +

    I sat back down in the vinyl recliner in the dimmed room — the sunlight filtered through the curtains we had drawn across the east-and fired up iBreviary for the first time since we got here. Yesterday was the feast of St. Ignatius of Antioch, one of my favorites. I clicked the “Lauds” button and decided on the common of martyrs.

    The reading was second Corinthians 1:3-5:

    Praised be the God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation! He comforts us in all our afflictions and thus enables us to comfort those who are in trouble, with the same consolation we have received from him. As we have shared much in the suffering of Christ, so through Christ do we share abundantly in his consolation.

    What do you think? Did I pass the quiz? I think maybe I got a fifty percent.

    + + +

    This morning things are looking up. Catheter is out, although she has a job to do before she can be sure that she won’t have to have it in again; also, she has been promised a chance to try mashed potatoes at lunchtime. Mark went to work for a couple of hours. I am about to comb her hair while she sits in a wheelchair and watches The Price is Right.

    The surgical team is optimistic that she will not develop a secondary infection, since there has been no fever. We are basically waiting for the digestive system to start working again, including fluids in and out, before she can come off the IV and be discharged.

    Thanks for all your prayers. If you feel moved to add more, let’s all ask that she not need another catheter because that part wasn’t any fun at all….

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    3 comments on Big-person questions.

  • N observations about the hospitalization of my 7-year-old.

    1. I have to call it “N” because I do not know how many I will get through before we are interrupted.

    2. Seven-year-old girls who tend to be a bit stubborn anyway discover a new power when some of their medication must be given orally. It turns out that you can lead a horse to narcotics, but you cannot make him swallow them. Today we had a spitting-the-pain-meds-back-in-our-faces incident. And then it was six hours before she could try them again, because we had no way to know how much was swallowed.

    3. Bribery works for a while, but it has a limited shelf life. Eventually the price of compliance rises enough that there aren’t any more stickers and Barbies left in the children’s bribe room that will adequately compensate for having to swallow nasty-tasting medicine.

    4. Fortunately, in the case of pain meds, the natural consequences method of discipline is on our side.

    5. At the end of four days of earnestly discussing my daughter’s case and advocating for her comfort to every person who walks into the room, my people skills are absolutely spent. Even though the people here are kind and encouraging and compassionate and positive, I can’t stand being around any people any more. I want to be able to communicate to everyone via text message.

    6. I am also starting to suffer from Good Parent Impostor Syndrome.

    7. When a hospital side table and a hospital-bed-lowering motor come into conflict, the hospital-bed-lowering motor wins. Fortunately they had a spare table in another room.

    8. Grandma is the best medicine:

    9. It has been a long time since I had a vending-machine burrito and a bag of chips for my dinner at 9:30 p.m.

    That kind of dinner wasn’t as good as I remembered.

    10. On a later day I remembered to eat breakfast at home, pack a lunch of homemade soup and wheat bread and apples, and get hummus and yogurt from the cafeteria before it closed. That day was better. Self care is still pretty important. I am kind of glad I am pregnant, otherwise I would probably not be bothering.

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    1 comment on N observations about the hospitalization of my 7-year-old.

  • Dramatic tension, and a hospital plug.

    Throughout my daughter’s hospitalization, one thing has become crystal clear:

    Back in the 90’s, I watched too damn much “E. R.”

    I am a pretty visual person, and there are any number of episodes I wish I could go back in time to un-see.

    This is not actually a new phenomenon. (Ever since I started having babies, for instance, there was THAT ONE IN PARTICULAR. You know which one I mean, I bet.).

    Not that it wasn’t a great show, some of the best writing I remember ever seeing on broadcast television. It’s just that I wish someone had issued me a warning: “Almost 20 years from now, you will be a parent, and your small daughter will be hospitalized after emergency surgery, and every time some good news comes along and everything is going fine and smoothly, you are going to reflexively expect that this is actually a sign that very soon, the music will pick up and it is ALL GOING TO GO WRONG, right before the commercial break, and so you will be constantly jumpy and looking for foreshadowing around every corner, and it will be all because of this show.”

    In truth there is no soundtrack here, no musical score or laugh track. And this floor is pretty quiet and boring (and frankly, so was the ER while we were in it; the most interesting thing was that we ran into a family we knew, who was there because the teen daughter had broken her leg).

    Other expectations that turned out to be inaccurate or at least out of date:

    – There is no all-night diner visible through the rain across the street. If you forget to get dinner before the cafeteria closes, it’s vending-machine burritos for you.

    – It turns out that to be realistic, all the scenes involving sick children should have spent approximately 75 percent of the time showing parents attempting to convince the child that she really will feel better if she will just swallow the oral pain meds, using techniques such as “You can wash it down with any clear fluid you want,” “It will hurt more later if you don’t,” and “Did you know that this medicine works SO WELL that they have to lock it up so people don’t steal it?”

    – So it used to be that the siblings of the hospitalized child were made jealous to hear about all the ice cream that the young convalescent got to eat. Today they are jealous because she gets her own loaner iPad preloaded with games and apps.

    Jokes aside, though, I will add here that Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis really has been completely awesome. Everybody has been just great. The nurses and the aides and the anesthesiologist and the ER doctors and the housekeeping staff — every one of them. I have no doubt that my daughter is getting top-notch care, and I can tell you that they have worked hard to give us the information we ask for, to listen to the information we have, to follow our cues about how to talk to our daughter about what choices she has and what choices she doesn’t have and what is going to happen and what we do and don’t know. We have been an equal partner in making decisions about how her pain is to be medicated. We have also been visited from time to time by staff who are monitoring hospital practices as part of systematic quality control efforts — for example, a team that checked for skin problems like bedsores and IV issues, looking for hospital-wide issues. The inpatient rooms are spacious and comfortable with a decent bed for parents to stay in (if I was not pregnant, it would almost be wide enough for both of us to stay together in it.) And I see good hand washing practice, and efforts to time procedures and checks so that they can be convenient and comfortable.

    All in all, things could be worse. I am feeling grateful.

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  • Crisis mode: holding down the ‘off’ button.

    I generally think of myself as the stony type. In the last 36 hours I have received a reminder of what it is to have a heart of flesh.

    I’ll give you the short version, and start with the ending (so far) so you don’t have to read nervously ahead for the ending. She’s alternately dozing and playing with a lender iPad in a hospital bed next to me. She is doing as well as can be expected. She is scheduled to get a dose of oxycodone in a little while.

    She is seven. She is mine.

    + + +

    Saturday we thought it was a stomach virus. When she woke crying at 5 AM yesterday morning, Sunday, I thought it was a urinary tract infection. Mark was an hour and a half drive away with our oldest at camp, so I took the two other boys with us to urgent care when it opened at 9. Not till almost 11 did the lab come back negative for UTI. By then she could barely walk. I hoisted her on my back to carry her to the car so we could get to the ER. Mark met us there, still reeking of campfire; I took the boys home for food and to pack overnight bags, and then to H’s. I rejoined Mark in the ER, learned that her white blood cell count was high and that her C-reactive protein (an inflammation marker) was high. She was sent out for ultrasounds, and waited, and cried for water, and then when the u/s proved inconclusive she was sent for a CT scan, and waited.

    At 5 PM, twelve hours after I resolved to take her in as soon as possible, we had the answer: the appendix. And an hour after that she was in surgery and we were waiting. And a couple of hours after that we had talked to the surgeon. The appendix had perforated and made a mess of her abdominal cavity. He described how he tilted the table around and washed her out.

    “The solution to the pollution is dilution,” he cracked dryly.

    We must have not looked amused enough because he said “You’ve heard this before?”

    “Yes,” we said together, tiredly.

    + + +

    At 11 pm I fell into bed at home, my pelvis and legs and feet one long ache, and slept. At three this morning I woke, thirsty, and stumbled downstairs to down a Gatorade. Back upstairs I couldn’t lie down comfortably, what with the Gatorade sloshing around and the baby kicking me, so I sat up in bed to get a few deep breaths. They went in all right, but they came out all wrong, broken and wet, and I was done for. No one else was home, the boys in sleeping bags at our friend’s house across town, Mark on the futon in her hospital room not many blocks away, and I did not have to be quiet.

    This was a good thing, as it turned out.

    + + +

    Something I knew but had forgotten, as it had been a long time since we had a frightening time with one of our children: In crisis, this mother’s heart can handle almost anything. It barely suffers, while there are things to be done: bags to pack, foreheads to stroke, soup to be stirred, cars to be driven across town and back again; even sleep to be slept. It is when there is nothing left to do for anyone for a time that fear and worry descends blackly and wraps around and clenches.

    + + +

    Earlier this week I wondered aloud to Mark if I knew what it was to be grateful, specifically.

    I often wonder about whether it is possible to make oneself feel the right feelings. He thinks we can encourage them; I think so, to, but one needs some raw materials to work with, and I wonder sometimes if I don’t have the right raw materials or if maybe I just don’t nourish them enough.

    Today I think it certain they are there. It is just that I spend quite a lot of time fooling myself into thinking I am in crisis mode, and must act and cannot waste time or effort or thought on them.

    Nothing like a real crisis to shock you: what I thought was real wasn’t anything like real at all.

    + + +

    I don’t think the heart metaphor is corny, by the way. Our feelings are largely corporal, after all; it may really be more of an endocrine thing, of course, but the circulatory system is involved, and anyway the point is taken. We can nurture them or fight them with the will, but they are largely body-things.

    + + +

    This is just to say that, some time after that but long before dawn, I got up and put in a load of laundry so that I could bring a clean change of clothes for everyone the next day, and found my daughter’s doll and her bathrobe and flip flops. And then I went back to bed and slept some more.

    And to say that we will be here a while, because even though there are no current signs of anything going poorly considering what she has been through, it will be several days or a week before we can say she is out of the woods.

    My challenge is to suppress the crisis-mode for now, because it is really waiting-mode.

    And one way I am doing that is by reflecting on how much there is to keep you busy when you are actively mothering the suffering, and how much harder when rest and quiet comes.

    You might not think the mother’s heart works that way, but it turns out that it can.

     

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  • Update on Julia and her peanut-sniffing dog fund.

    Remember Julia and her campaign for donations to help her pay for the training of an allergen alert dog?

    With nearly three-quarters of the money raised toward the goal, Julia’s family has been able to reserve a labradoodle puppy from a breeder in western Canada and set him up with a trainer from I Smell Trouble, LLC in Montana.

    Meet Quincy, the eager freshman student with the $8,000 nose:

    Says Cathie, Julia’s mom:

    Here’s Julia’s guardian angel. He is tiny now but we know he will sprout wings and keep her safe.

    After a few months of preliminary training, Julia will take Quincy home for socialization training around Christmas. I will keep you all updated on his progress!

    Thanks to all readers who shared the link, donated, or said a prayer.

     

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  • The wheel of the generations.

    Last weekend we went to stay with another family we have known since I was in graduate school. On Saturday afternoon I found myself at the elementary-school playground, watching my kids run around on the grass. The youngest one was literally running around — in circles — and the older ones were playing ultimate frisbee with the other kids and dads.

    Me? I was too tired to run or kick a ball or throw a frisbee or do anything but gestate. In mid-to-late pregnancy, everything is growing so fast that it sucks up all the available energy. And even if the rational mind knows why this is, and understands the deep reasonableness of to sitting and take it easy for a few minutes or an hour between doings, sometimes it weighs heavily.

    Oof, I am a good-fer-nuthin’ sluggish loser. It affords a marvelous opportunity to feel slightly sorry for oneself.

    Out on the grassy field, my seven-year-old daughter, the only girl on the field, sprinted after the boys, leaped for a catch and missed, skidded to a stop and ran back the other way. She is a confident girl-child, strong and bright, more than a little ornery these days.

    I am ornery too, swelling and tired. I have written before: I wake up many mornings, astonished to find myself here, having chosen to throw all my best efforts into raising and educating five children. Plenty of other worthy people save some of their best efforts to build other things. Often very worthwhile things, and indeed things that serve families in many different ways.

    “…the family constitutes one of the most important terms of reference for shaping the social and ethical order of human work…. In fact, the family is … a community made possible by work…

    “…Man must work out of regard for others, especially his own family, but also for the society he belongs to, the country of which he is a child, and the whole human family of which he is a member, since he is the heir to the work of generations and at the same time a sharer in building the future of those who will come after him in the succession of history, All this constitutes the moral obligation of work.” — Laborem exercens 16

    (I am trying to get across, in case you can’t tell because pregnancy has stunted my communication skills, a notion of “there are a lot of different ways to lead a life of good service to the human community that helps children and families to flourish.” It is meant to be an inclusive sort of expression. I am trying to insulate myself from accusations of taking a side in the mommy wars here.)

    Even so, I am haunted by a rat-racey sort of element. All that time, effort, and emotion I invested becoming an educated person, now poured into the education of more little persons, some of whom in turn might simply pour all their effort into the education of their own young. Turning, turning, turning through the years. Get ready, get ready, get ready for a real life, when you will grow up to do Important Things and be respected. And then: when readiness is achieved, toss it all lightly aside in favor of a more centered life… one spent helping little ones get ready, get ready, get ready.

    A treadmill wheel, so to speak.

    I think the vague disquiet comes from having grown up with the notion that the most important thing for a bright girl to do is to grow up and achieve. Other than making plenty of money and living in interesting places, the details were often missing. Perhaps it all only meant “achieve more than those other people do.” Instead I am achieving something that anyone with working reproductive organs and enough time on her hands can do, and do just as well as I can.

    + + +

    “Poor kid,” I say to my husband later about my youngest, as I decompress in a recliner, “by the time i have this baby he’s not going to be able to remember a time before I was practically an invalid.”

    “‘Poor kid’ indeed,” says my husband, “he is going to have a new sibling to play with.”

    “Yes, and that will be worth it,” I say. I suppose it is a different sort of treadmill, one a little closer to nature. Raise kids to raise kids to raise kids, on and on, one generation after another.

    On this treadmill, the primary directive is to keep children, then adults, whole: by keeping families whole, by passing on the habit of living examined lives dedicated to forming the next generation. These families are “made possible by work,” and so it’s also to serve that prime directive that we pass on diligence, care, a knowledge base, and skills.

    It’s so easy to mistake the means for the end, isn’t it?

    You look outside and work on the world outside the circle of the family, always in order to strengthen and support and form your family, so that your children grow up strong and can do the same. But the circles are interconnected and the work we do also (if it is good work) serves other families through the medium of society and an economy. It all hangs together, and the whole thing will be stronger the more of us who acknowledge that the purpose of all that work is to prepare the next generation and also a place for it to thrive — and each individual has a place in that scheme whether he or she passes on genes or not, and whether he or she takes a place willingly or not.

    And that? That is even before you bring eternity into the mix.

    Every act, thought, and word has unimaginable consequences: a truth that is accessible to all honest philosophy.

     

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  • On getting one’s body back.

    Jamie has a lovely meditation on weaning her youngest child.  

    Timely, for our extended family!

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    6 comments on On getting one’s body back.

  • Workaholic.

    One problem with living by pithy aphorisms and proverbs:  they aren't one-size fits all.  

    This ought to be obvious considering how many of them are diametrically opposed.   Consider "many hands make light work" and "too many cooks spoil the broth," for instance.

    Anyway, one of my current besetting character flaws could be characterized by an excessive adherence to "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today."

    Or at least a selectively excessive adherence to it.  I had better not pretend a fake character flaw, the kind that people spout in job interviews when the interviewer says, "Tell me about one of your worst traits" and they say things like "Aw gee, it's embarrassing but sometimes I'm a perfectionist."   Because it's not like my problem is lack of procrastination.  

    Just ask my mother-in-law, who recently cleaned out my cupboards for me. 

    + + + 

    Here's one of the things about homeschooling.  At least when you are in the middle of it, as I am —

    — no wait, I'm not in the middle of it yet — I'm nine years in and I have at least eighteen to go, unless I quit —

    — I mean we — or they — whatever — point taken – 

    — OK, at least when you are in the thick of it, as I am, it seems to stretch on forever into a boundless foggy future.   But you can see a while down the road, maybe a couple of years out, and… you've got to be ready for it, right?

     Especially if you're like me and you kind of hate winging it.  You need a Plan.

    So you look out there and you think…

    …my oldest will be starting high school in a couple of years, I need to get ready to set up a portfolio and a record system.  

    And my second-grader just isn't clicking well with the same history program that her brother did, she needs something different or at least a break, maybe a geography program, I should look into those for next year.  

    And I wonder what books I should have my kids read in high school for American Literature, I know it's several years off but it would be nice to have something in mind, should we do it in historical order or organize it by region, or maybe even some genre stuff , or how about the theme of how American literature fits into a world-literature canon, I almost don't care as long as we don't have to do The Scarlet Letter.  I should make a list now.  

    And next month we're going to do some science labs that could use it, it's about time I start shopping around for a good used microscope.

     And I really hate making those spelling worksheets that I started on this year, but they're working so well and I'm seeing real results, I should just sit down and crank out as many as possible so I won't have to do them again for a while.  And I should and I should and I should and I should….

    It doesn't ever have to stop, if you don't want it to.  You can spend your entire weekend, in the nice weather, if the kids are occupied, researching curriculum and churning out worksheets and syllabi.   Particularly if you kind of miss doing work at a computer, sitting down, the way you used to.  And which is even better in 2013 with Reddit just a click away whenever you get bored.  

    And all of which is more fun than cleaning out the cupboards, and easier in many ways than actually interacting with one's children.

    (I know.  Many of you have the opposite problem.  You play and enjoy your kids and your home and the outdoors, but then you never get around to any planning or school-prep, because that's not the  and so you feel really disorganized when it's time to sit down and do schoolwork.    I understand.  We are not all the same.  Except that everyone has something they wish was better about themselves.)

    + + +

    Anyway, I decided I work too damn much, so I resolved last week (while I was walking around the lake with Mark, on a gorgeous autumn Sunday during which my in-laws were watching the kids while we escaped for a few minutes) to set some time limits and stick to them.  I can do advance school planning on Wednesday evenings while the kids are at religious ed and Mark is grocery shopping, and on Saturday mornings at the coffee shop during Erin's Weekend Sanity Hours O'Solitude And Breakfast, and in the leftover time on Sunday evenings — if I have some after I've done my get-ready-for-THIS-week stuff.  

    That's like six hours in total.  I'm tempted to write "…and that ought to be enough," except that it probably isn't and won't feel like it and it will feel like I am leaving ten thousand things undone that, if only I would do them in advance, would make everything run so much more smoothly.

    But I have to shut off the damn computer and come to bed sometimes, you know? Whether I've done "enough" or not.  Truth is, I'll never do "enough" because I could always do "more."  In all the areas of my life.  It's time to do Not Enough on purpose in this one.

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  • Service dog support.

    Here's a little vignette that, I hope, will inspire you with gratitude and perspective.  And perhaps some generosity.  Share the link and enjoy.

    + + +

    My friend Cathie (who's also my three-year-old's godmother, by the way!) has recently turned to GoFundMe to beg funds for a peanut-sniffing service dog, ASAP, to protect her teen daughter Julia.  I thought I'd put a plug in for them here.

    + + +

    Julia is a lovely young woman, fond of crafts, children, chess, and literature.  She is Cathie's oldest daughter, number two in a family of six.  

    664194_1379730301.2842

     

    Homeschooling has been the right choice for their family, in part because Julia and her sisters and brothers live with numerous different food allergies and sensitivities, some of them immediately life-threatening.   Tree nuts, finfish, shellfish, wheat, eggs, dairy, rice, you name it — somebody in their house is sensitive to it.   

    Julia's mother is, as you might imagine, an extremely versatile cook, and very good at streamlining and doing things such as making one kind of meal for one child and a different kind for another and a third kind for herself.  I have had lunch at their house and personally observed three different pizza crusts being prepared at the same meal.  

    Very tasty pizza crusts, I might add.  If anyone could rock multiple food sensitivities in a family of eight, it would be Cathie.

    + + +

    But while one can adapt meals for kids and adults with "mere" sensitivities, peanuts (along with a few other things) have to be Protein Non Grata in Julia's household.  

    Everyone knows some people are allergic to peanuts, a few of them quite severely.  Lots of kids have epi-pens stored with the school nurse.  It seems that more and more parents every year have to carefully vet each good-faith proffered piece of candy or baked goods.  We all know it's a growing problem.  

    But Julia has one of those instant, frightening, call-911 peanut allergies that make it hard even to enter public spaces.   Here's Cathie, recounting the event that caused them to bite the bullet and start raising money for a service dog:

    On Sunday we called 911 after arriving home from our Montana vacation. Julia had touched something with peanut residue at a restaurant on the way home. Within minutes, her fingers, knuckles and hands were swollen and covered with hives. She must have also brushed her lips because they were swelling up, too….

    …We are quite certain that the contact happened when she touched something in the bathroom at the restaurant, possibly the bathroom door.   Whatever it was, it was small enough to not be visible or smell-able because she is overly scrupulous about what she touches.

    Cathie has told me that Julia cannot shop in grocery stores that have an open bin of bulk whole peanuts because the tiny dust particles sent into the air from the shells as they are scooped and poured trigger an allergic reaction in her airway.  Some time ago, at a friend's house that had been thought "clean," Julia (walking barefoot on the carpet) stepped on a fraction of a piece of dry cereal, just a crumb, on the carpet.  "Her entire foot swelled up," Cathie told me.  "Within minutes."

    + + +

    Julia is of high school age now.  She is active in a scouting organization, in church, and in several academic clubs, and hopes to attend college, hold down a job, travel, serve the community, and all the other things that young people dream of doing.  But at this point, she and her family have had to reckon with severe limitations on her activities in public spaces.  

    • Young people with allergies as severe as Julia's cannot safely hold many typical teenagers' jobs, such as food service or babysitting.  
    • Looking to the future, it's impractical to expect that prospective employers would be willing to enforce peanut-free policies.  
    • It's unrealistic to expect that the young people she might meet while away at college will carefully keep peanut products off the surfaces in a college residence hall.   
    • Maintaining a social and professional life will be challenging if she cannot safely enter most restaurants, coffee shops, or break rooms.

    Of course,  most restaurants, coffee shops, and breakrooms are not, in fact, contaminated invisibly with peanut residue.  Most of them are, in fact,  safe for Julia to enter and use… but she doesn't have a good way of finding out when they're not safe.  

    This is why a service animal seems to be an appealing choice for Julia.  Service animals are allowed to workin most public places by statute.  We are most familiar with dogs that have been specially trained to assist people who cannot see well enough to safely navigate public spaces and streets, and with dogs (and a few other animals) that perform routine tasks for people that have limited mobility.   

    In Julia's case, an "allergen alert" dog — using capabilities similar to those exploited by police dogs that detect narcotics or explosives — offers her the hope of quickly assessing her environment as she moves through it.  Rather than avoiding EVERY place and event where she MIGHT come into contact with dangerous residue or dust, she hopes to be able to enter spaces freely, and rely on the service dog to alert on particular contaminated objects and surfaces.

    + + +

    Julia's family recently returned from a trip to visit I Smell Trouble, LLC, a trainer of allergen alert dogs in Bozeman, Montana.   Julia's pictured above with one of their dogs, which I guess they were taking out for a test drive.

    (Some care had to be taken before the trip to identify a breed whose dander would not trigger sensitivities in any of the family members. Fortunately there are a few viable choices, so they do not find themselves in the especially unenviable position of being allergic to all the allergen alert animals.)

    Here's Cathie:

     The trainer has an opening for a dog for Julia if we can raise the money quickly and locate the breed we need – an Australian Labradoodle or Standard Poodle, due to their hypoallergenic properties. This is an almost two year process to get a puppy and have it fully trained and certified as a peanut detection dog…

    We've been contemplating getting a peanut detection dog for Julia for almost a year now, but there is just no way we can afford it. 

    Today we decided we just have to ask for help.

    Please check out our fundraising site. 

    I thought I'd lend my blog today to tell Julia's story, raise awareness of severe and immediately life-threatening environmental allergy, and — perhaps — encourage readers to pass the story on and help Julia raise the funds she needs to get on the list to acquire a service animal.  

    Julia would be about sixteen years old by the time her service animal is ready — the perfect coming-out gift for a young woman who has a lot to offer the world, as soon as she can move freely in it.

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    1 comment on Service dog support.

  • This is what we do at our house instead of decorating a nursery.

    Climbing walls in the basement!

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    Check out the hinges on the side of that overhang, so we can use it for storage space.  (No, the hinges are not weight-bearing.  The triangular "door" is screwed shut — it won't be for frequently accessed storage space).  

    Next job is polyurethane on everything.  Then the floor mats, parts of which we are buying used (from a local climbing gym).  Then those boxes of jumbled climbing holds that have been gathering dust in Mark's shop will finally start getting put to use…

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    1 comment on This is what we do at our house instead of decorating a nursery.

  • Four months to go.

    0924132134-00

    Well, this is just ridiculous.

    + + + 

    I'm all dressed up (such as it is) in the photo because we went out to dinner last night, since my in-laws are visiting and offered to stay with the kids.  

    I wore comfortable shoes because I thought maybe we would take a walk across the Stone Arch Bridge before or after dinner.  It was a beautiful autumn evening, clear and mid-sixties with no wind.

    Mark said, "I don't own shoes that aren't comfortable."

    I said, "All my shoes are comfortable enough for expected performance windows, but not all of them are expected to perform on a long walk when I am heavily pregnant."

    + + +

    We didn't walk across the bridge because we didn't have time before dinner and afterwards I felt too waddly.  Here is a picture I stole from the internet instead of taking it, so you can imagine what we planned on doing and didn't do.

    Unknown-2
    (If you took this, and you ask me to, I'll take it down)

    + + + 

    You can't see the stone-archiness from the bridge itself, of course.  This is what it looks like from a place where you can see it:

    Unknown-1

    Only it was dark, and clear.  Lovely night to be out.  Instead we wandered around the university area and looked at construction sites and the big warehousey factory of the Metal-Matic corporation, where they turn metal sheets into custom-ordered metal tubing.  It was the end of the workday and the big sliding doors were open, and you could see onto the floor.  

    So that was interesting to look at, and it's not the kind of thing I can steal pictures from the internet about, unless maybe I took it from the company's website (she says, and then checks, and finds that it's a little short on glossy stock photos.)

    + + +

    We went to Restaurant Alma, which I think will now be my go-to recommendation for people coming in from out of town and wanting upper-end good food.  Its schtick is a prix-fixe three-course dinner of fairly small plates where you select each of the three courses from a list, and then you can add a wine flight which they will match to your dinner.

    Mark had a bison carpaccio with a sweeter-than-I-expected chenin blanc, and a sweet corn soup with smoked salmon that came with what I think was a pinot grigio, and a really outstanding poached sturgeon with potatoes and bacon that came with a red wine that I failed to taste.  (I commented that I could probably recreate the sturgeon dish with cod if he wanted me to give it a try sometime).

    I had a dish of kohlrabi-apple slaw with glazed pork belly, and a mushroom farrotto (very like a risotto) with shaved asiago cheese and a soft-boiled egg on top — I am a sucker for soft-boiled eggs, love them at all hours — and a crispy trout with sticky rice and coconut-ginger-chile broth.  I wished for more sticky rice, but the meal was otherwise close to perfect.

    I said no to the wine flight, because I was delighted to find my favorite sweet stout on the beer list — Left Hand Brewing Company's Milk Stout — and I drank that happily with the pork belly and the mushroom thing, and then switched to sparkling water to go with the fish since one beer is really, quite seriously, my upper limit.  (And stout with crispy Thai-flavored fish?  Um, no.  But it was really perfect with the pork belly.)

    + + +

    I could have claimed this as my birthday dinner out, but I told Mark I wanted to go out somewhere with the kids for my birthday.  They like a party, and this way I won't wind up baking myself a cake.  I suggested brunch at a local place that does an outstanding brunch with these caramel roll ring things.  

    And then I remembered that we will be spending my birthday with friends.  So that complicates things.  But maybe we can still manage to do something festive.  Or maybe we can do it on not-really-my-real-birthday.  I don't mind having multiple birthdays. 

    + + +

    The other project of this week:  Mark is taking several days off work — they had been saved for a family vacation that fell through — to do some projects around the house.  This is why my in-laws are up visiting, so that Mark's dad can help him.  They pulled a fence and some young trees out of our front yard and put in some winter rye grass seed to try to halt the front-yard erosion, readying it to plant sedum in the spring.  And then they started working on our basement climbing wall:

    0924131403-00

    It wraps around three walls, the overhang bit, and part of the ceiling.  

    Route-setting will have to wait until the wall-to-wall padded floor is complete, which won't happen this weekend.  The key was to get all the heavy pieces of plywood up while my FIL is here to help.

    + + +

    All right… time for breakfast.  I have some fresh plums and pecans to put on my cereal that my in-laws brought up for us.  Lucky me!

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    4 comments on Four months to go.

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