The Wives debate

The last few days, life (well, school, work, and tantrums) have been kicking my butt a bit - thank goodness for Jon Stewart and Chocolate Chip Cookies.

From Salon

From the outside looking in, family life seems chaotic and irritating. Meandering through the world like multiheaded beasts that sweat and squeal and bicker and grumble, families take up too much space, make loud, unpredictable noises and leave big messes everywhere they go.
It's easy not to want a family when you see one lumbering toward you from a distance. It wouldn't make much sense to wish for an army of little mouths that need to be fed and limbs that need to be washed and butts that need to be wiped. It wouldn't be logical to long for big piles of filthy laundry and stacks of dirty dishes and tens of thousands of necessary errands and appointments. No one daydreams about snotty faces and unmade beds and day-care bills.
And when you throw in your childhood memories, a string of mildly oppressive family activities, pesky chores and unbearable car trips, punctuated by countless little breakdowns and clashes and standoffs and shouting matches, it can be troubling, indeed, to contemplate creating a topsy-turvy emotional fiefdom of your own.
But once you have a family, all of that fades away. When you settle into the necessary rhythms of recurring Monopoly games and slow-cooker recipes and activities designed to contain the chaos of small people, neurotic worries sink into the background. Emancipated from the incessant demands of the ego, you're free to revert to your basest, dorkiest state. Conveniently, this is also the state that kids like the most: the singer of dumb songs about putting on your shoes, the aggressive landlord at St. Charles Place, the wide-eyed moron who's awed by big trucks and helicopters, the freak who'll dance to anything, from Radiohead to the nursery rhyme electronica of children's toys.

Becoming a cheerful, enthusiastic halfwit turns out to be tremendously relaxing. And while a family can feel like an unwieldy clown car with a flat tire and bad steering, most of the time, it's pretty fun to drive.

Two book recommendations

Tonight I had a bit of time to read a few chapters from Three Cups of Tea. The book is the story of a former mountaineer who dedicates himself to building schools in Pakistan. It is a very similiar story to one of my favorite books of all times, Mountains beyond Mountains. MbM is the story of Paul Farmer, a Harvard educated MD/Anthropologist who dedicates himself to ending heatlh care disparities in the world - and focuses especially in Haiti. I absolutely love two of the messages both theses books put forward. The first is that all human being deserve quality health care and education. These are basic human rights and any numerous arguments or reasons to the contrary are, quite frankly, BS. If our country can wage billion dollar wars, surely we can summon the resources to come up with decent schools and medical care for, if not the world's citizens , than at least our own.

The other thing that I admire so much in these stories, is that both of these men have gained a great deal of respect from the communities they work in - because they come without an attitude of superiority, but pay proper respect to the people they are trying to help. They both do things like learn the languages of the people they work with and make efforts to work with local leaders.

I could go off on a little soap box for quite a while....but won't bother. We are all going to sit down and play a board game before the kids sit down to bed. We are having such a great day - Ariel worked this morning while I braved a combo of spin class/swimming lessons/house cleaning/Farmer's Market with the kids. This afternoon when we were all together and we hung around and read and played games. Somehow the kids all managed to get along - I am extremely thankful for days like these.

The five person dog leash

Conversation overhead at my house tonight; MOM!! Elias is eating candy!!. No - he's just eating a crayon. (Insert whiny voice) MOM, I want some.

shpilkes

I read a great term that really describes me - I am shpilkes, a Yiddish word for "ants in the pants"...which is why I have been fantasizing a bit about joining the foreign service as a nurse practitioner and schlepping my family around the world. Since any actual decisions to do so are a long way off, it is a nice little fantasy that makes me happy. Here is a list of cities where Foreign Service Nurse Practitioners work.

Abuja, Accra, Ankara, Asmara, Antananarivo, Beijing, Bucharest, Budapest, Baku, Bangkok, Bogota, Brussels, Colombo, Conakry, Harare, Havana, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Kabul, Kampala, Kiev, Kathmandu, Kigali Kinshasa, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait, La Paz, Lilongwe, London, Managua, Manila, Maputo, Mexico City, Monrovia, Moscow, Nairobi, Ndjamena, New Delhi, Niamey, Ouagadougou, Prague,Pretoria, Quito, Rabat, San Salvador, Santo Domingo, Sarajevo, Sofia, Tashkent, Tel Aviv, Tbilisi, Tegucigalpa, Tirana, Tokyo, Tunis, Vienna, Yaounde, Yerevan, Ft. Lauderdale and Washington, D.C.

Pediatric Heptologists

Uggh. I woke up with a very nasty cold - which unfortunately coincided with my working a few extra days to cover someone's vacation at work. Ariel has been staying at home with the kiddos. I really hate having to work with a cold...partially because I really just want to stay in bed and partially because I really should not be around a lot of our immune compromisde patients. We have a small department, however, and if I am out sick there really isn't anyone to cover me. I just wear a face mask and wash my hands constantly. My cold gave me an excuse to just come home and sit down (well, and study ear, nose, and throat disorders) - the dishes are going to sit dirty in the sink for now. We watched a Japanese Anime movie called Sprited Away - we were all totally transfixed. I thought it might be a little scary, but the kids were fine.
We also went to see a pediatric hepatitis specialist for the girls yesterday. I didn't even know if they would treat kids with Hep C - but it turns out she will. Whenever we are ready, we can start the treatment. Unfortunately, the treatment is an interferon shot once a week for an entire year - plus monthly labs to monitor progress. I am not thrilled about starting the girls on such a treament, but the Dr. said that they handle the treatment much better than adults with the added bonus that treating it when they are young would mean that they may never suffer liver damage. I have a couple of patients who get interferon (it is a type of chemo), and they said it makes them feel like they have the flu for a couple days after each shot. The alternative is not great either - that they might get sick enough to have liver failure and could need a transplant. Luckily, she was totally supportive of us waiting a bit longer until we feel ready - and maybe the girls could understand a bit better.

War and Peace

It has taken me almost two years, but tonight I actually finished War and Peace. It really was an amazing book - although I think I only absorbed about 1/10th of the book itself...someday I hope to read the new Volkonsky and Pelvear translation, which is suppposed to be much better than Garnett's - but for now I will settle for having read it once. I love Tolstoy, especially because he writes about family better than any one else.
I got to finish the book because Ariel is back from his film festival orgy - last night he stayed up for All Freakin' Night to watch ten hours of B-Horror flims. It is the capstone of the film fest and is always sold out. Ar said it started out a lot more fun at midnight. While Ariel tried to recover today, I took the three oldest kids to Seattle for my niece's bowling birthday party and for dinner with friends.
The bowling party went much better than I thought it would - I don't tend to get along that great with my sister and I often find kid's birthday parties very overwhelming and stressful. The kids all had a really good time and Shkuri even bowled one strike.
After the party we swung by the neighborhood I grew up in, Columbia City, to pick up some Ethiopian Food. When I lived there in the 1980s the area was quite ghetto, but now it is gentrified enough to have lots of charm and amenities, but is still incredibly diverse and maintains an exciting vibe. To bad my parents sold their house there for $40,000 ( probably worth ten times that now). Dinner at our friend Eric and Laura's was also really great - I just don't think there is much better in life than good company and yummy food compounded by happily playing children. I think Tolstoy would probably agree.

A widow for ten days

About an hour and a half ago, I was planning on posting how great the kids have been today. Barely an argument or a mishap between them. Their school conference was today and both S and I are doing very well in first grade. Well. Ahem. Let's just say I can't write that anymore. See, Ariel usually 'does' bedtime while I get to studying. The kids do pretty good in listening and obeying him.
Ariel has spent every night going to the Olympia Film Festival - sort of a combined vacation/birthday present. I am at home doing single parent duty. I am very happy for him to go and enjoy himself - I like my share of odd films, but eight hours a night of Oly Film movies are way out of my league. Bedtime is testing all of my reserves....it seems that every night one child will not do anything I say. Tonight it was Shkuri. She didn't like the book I read. I put too much toothpaste on her toothbrush - and she most certainly did not want to go to bed. She is very stubborn and defiant when she gets in a mood like that, and I am afraid I was reduced to frothing at the mouth when she continued to turn on the light after I shut the door. At this very moment, she is yelling at me to screw her lightbulbs back in - but I think I have finally won this round.
In my quieter moments, I happily imagine myself as uber-Mom, who never loses her temper and always serves her children organic food and reads them Proust at bedtime (in the original French, of course). I am really hoping that all of this is providing some great character building (for me, as well as the kids)

Ian Mcewan

Since my favorite movie category of all time is "gorgeous star crossed lovers in a beautifully photographed historical setting with a broody British guy" - I was thrilled to see the preview for Atonement. I had heard of the book before but wasn' t very familiar with it. In anticipation of the movie, I started reading the book and it is absolutely delicious. It is so nice to read a novel that isn't trying to hard too be anything more than a well written story. I read 130 pages last night instead of studying - so today I am getting my homework done first.