WanderingAmylessly 2.0

If you have ever eaten in a restaurant... If you have ever worked in a restaurant... If you have ever been related to someone who works in a restaurant (Bri, I feel your pain sweetie)... YOU MUST READ THE WAITERRANT BLOG! Click this post's headline to go there directly. I'm addicted! Here's a sampling: The Rules (to be amended at will!) Since most dining patrons are social misfits I have decided to publish some guidelines to make your dining experience run smoothly. 1 Reserve early. You want to eat out on Saturday night? Well if the place is any good it will be mobbed so plan ahead. Book a table by Tuesday. Saturday night is rife with countless self-centered yuppies that stand open mouthed at the hostess stand when they are told the place is booked. Don't be like those people. Make the call. 2. Turn off your cell phone. Unless you are a doctor on standby waiting for a donor organ to arrive, turn your phone off. (Such a doctor would be eating in the hospital cafeteria a...

I wanted to offer another Baby Joseph update. Joe had yet another surgery yesterday, this one a "jaw distraction". Seems he has a tiny chin—tinier and more recessed than it should be—which does not allow him to breathe well on his own. They've had to reintubate him several times, so this is supposed to put his jaw where it's supposed to be. The details aren't pretty. They inserted screws into his jaw and will turn them over the next few days, moving the jaw into place. Then he has to wear a rather freaky looking headgear get-up for several weeks until bone grows in and makes his jaw movement permanent. Checking Joe's blog every day, sometimes several times a day, has become part of our routine. We show Henry pictures of his little cousin and talk about Baby Joe often. We think about him constantly. And our hearts go out to Kerry and Jason. All they want to do is get their little one well enough to go home, well enough to breastfeed and to snuggle and to be hel...

I just finished Robert Beattie's book, "Nightmare in Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler." I can overlook the misspellings and misplaced punctuation. I can understand the occasional glitch in chronology or consistency, given that the author, a Wichita attorney, had to frantically finish the book and get it to press once suspect Dennis Rader had been apprehended. But what I cannot stomach are the last few pages when Beattie uses a parade of quotes by people close to the investigation to hammer readers over the head with the notion that if it weren't for Bob Beattie writing his book, BTK would've never resurfaced and Rader would still be living his suburbia dogcatcher existence. The book started out as a tribute to the hard work, dedication, and persistence of law enforcement. It developed into a remembrance of the victims and their survivors. Then it ended as a rather vomitous, gloating, back-slapping display of self-centered limelight-hogging. Reminded me a li...

On our way to work this a.m., my husband and I had a very strange conversation, prompted by a song we heard on the radio. I am not sure what station we'd turned to, although I'm pretty sure we had switched from the NPR station a while back to avoid the fund drive and never bothered to switch back. Anyway, it was like a blast from the past. "St. Elmo's Fire" by John Parr. The fact that I know the singer's name and all the words to the song is frightening enough, but when we started talking about the movie, it got way weirder. I started spouting some of my favorite lines. And I kept saying, "It's such a great movie." He said, "I've seen the movie. It was good. I just don't know the entire script by heart." And that's when it really hit me. That movie is 20 years old. Made in 1985. The film that prompted the world to refer to a group of young, hot actors as "The Brat Pack." I find it very frightening that two whole de...

Thanks to those who have expressed their caring and concerns for my cousin and her family. Several people have asked for an update, so here it is... My cousin's wee one, Baby Joe, has suffered a few setbacks. He didn't handle the extubation well at all, so he's back on the ventilator. He also now has an infection and a fever, so they're treating him with antibiotics. They reinserted a chest tube to remove fluid from around his lungs. And he's on steroids to try to relieve the inflammation in his throat and vocal cords. Yet Mommy Kerry saw the positive. On her blog she wrote: Joe's numbers looked a lot better to me. His alarms hardly made sounds today at all. His oxygen level was in the low 80s, high 70s. This will be normal for him until his second surgery when normal will be 80s. After the third surgery, around age two, his oxygen level should be in the 90s. Joe had his eyes open quite a bit for me today. I sang to him and talked to him a bunch and the nurses p...

We bought a house with an unfinished basement, thinking—as I'm sure every potential homeowner does when buying a house with unfinished space—that we will magically morph into a Bob Vila/Martha Stewart hybrid and transform our blank canvas into a home-improvement, do-it-yourself masterpiece that will add endless hours of joy and togetherness to our lives and will inevitably double the value of our home when we sell it. Two years later, we have a kid, busy work lives, and outdoor activities beckoning. Do we really have time to take Drywall 101 or learn to become plumbers and electricians, potentially flooding our home and/or electricuting ourselves in the process? I'd say if there's one thing I learned from MRGs (the Moron Roofing Guys from last November—and don't even ASK), it's that if PROFESSIONALS can't even do a job right, AIN'T NO WAY we're going to master the job. So, I had an hour-long meeting with the first of several remodeling contractors biddin...

Doggone is a word that makes a lot of sense. It expresses frustration, disappointment, sadness, wistfulness, empathy. People say "doggone it" when a kid falls and scrapes a knee, or when someone can't find their keys, or when George Bush sends more troops to Iraq (sometimes, people say other words, which I will refrain from using because, for the most part, this is a "family" blog). Ever since we had to put down our wonderful lab mix baby Ansel last summer, I've felt a great sense of emptiness...a great sense of all those aforementioned feelings that the word expresses. Indeed, the dog is gone. Doggone. Dammit. I've been trying to look at the rational side of the situation...we don't have to spend money on vet bills and food and medicines and occasional boarding and all that. Although we do have some costs for our cat, which was my husband's compromise to me when I begged for another dog soon after Ansel's passing, she's not nearly as cos...

You've known 'em...those who play... THE PRONOUN GAME. Maybe it's the guy in high school drama class who isn't yet ready to open the closet door. Or perhaps it's the sorority member trying to be just another one of the girls. Or it could be the suit-and-tie executive who maintains a very private existence. I never understood why anyone would expend such energy and brainpower to live such a guarded and secretive and mysterious life. Although I never had a need to "play" the game, so whadda I know about it anyway. And maybe after living one's life this way long enough, it becomes one's norm. Wikipedia even has an entry for "pronoun game". The pronoun game is the phrase used to describe the attempts used by someone not to use a gender specific pronoun in describing or identifying their partner, friend, or lover to a third person. It is especially prevalent in circles where the speaker does not know how the person hearing about the other pers...

I giggled. I laughed out loud. I chortled. I guffawed. I almost fell off my chair. If you'd like to read just about the funniest story I've come across in a very long time, please click on this post's headline. If you're a man, you'll probably quickly exit the site and make some crack about PMS. If you're a woman, you'll be thankful you live in 2005. Maybe. When you're drinking your cocktails this evening (Cosmos with a Midol chaser?), offer a toast to the Museum of Menstruation, and to writer Mary Roach for making your tummy ache—in a good way.

So Unsexy—Alanis Morisette Oh these little rejections how they add up quickly One small sideways look and I feel so ungood Somewhere along the way I think I gave you the power to make Me feel the way I thought only the Father could Oh these little rejections how they seem so real to me One forgotten birthday I'm all but cooked How these little abandonments seem to sting so easily I'm 13 again am I 13 for good? I can feel so unsexy for someone so beautiful So unloved for someone so fine I can feel so boring for someone so interesting So ignorant for someone of sound mind Oh these little protections how they fail to serve me One forgotten phone call and I'm deflated Oh these little defenses how they fail to comfort me Your hand pulling away and I'm devastated When will you stop leaving baby? When will I stop deserting baby? When will I start staying with myself? Oh these little projections how they keep springing from me I jump my ship as I take it personally Oh these lit...

Self esteem. Those two words, 10 little letters, make such a difference in humans' lives. It's astonishing, really. I just read an article on the web (maybe that was my first mistake) that stated "self esteem is your key to happiness and success." And another article, written to explain the words' definition to children, says, "It's how much you value yourself and how important you think you are. It's how you see yourself and how you feel about your achievements. Self-esteem isn't bragging about how great you are. It's more like quietly knowing that you're worth a lot (priceless, in fact!). It's not about thinking you're perfect—because nobody is—but knowing that you're worthy of being loved and accepted." Now imagine you're one of those people in cartoons who has an angel sitting on one shoulder and a devil sitting on the other. If you have high self esteem, the devil's sitting in a corner with a dunce cap on and ...

I read this on the blog of a fellow Midwestern woman (Jen's blog can be found by clicking on this post's headline), and I giggled. So I thought I'd share. The title of the post was "Why Women are so Crabby." Hallelujah, sister! We started to "bud" in our blouses at 9 or 10 years old only to find that anything that came in contact with those tender, blooming buds hurt so bad it brought us to tears. So came the ridiculously uncomfortable training bra contraption that the boys in school would snap until we had calluses on our backs. Next, we get our periods in our early to mid-teens (or sooner). Along with those budding boobs, we bloated, we cramped, we got the hormone crankies, had to wear little mattresses between our legs or insert tubular, packed cotton rods in places we didn't even know we had. Our next little rite of passage (premarital or not) was having sex for the first time which was about as much fun as having a ramrod push your uterus throug...

My husband and I abandoned our baby. It was only for one night. He was safe and sound, hanging out with his grandparents. And we enjoyed immensely our first overnight trip away from our child together since he was born 17 months ago. I even refrained from calling more than a couple times to check on him. But he was on my mind the whole time. What if he was sad? What if he was sick? What if he fell down the stairs? What if he forgot who I was? What if his socks didn't match his outfit? And so goes the mind of a neurotic, anxiety prone, manic-depressive, obsessive, first-time mom. I left copious notes about what he should eat, what he shouldn't eat, what to do if he had a headache or toothache, when to change his diapers, how to do the bedtime ritual and tuck him in just so. I left phone numbers for his doctor, for his daycare, for his friends' parents, for my cell, for our work. I know, it's totally pathetic, but I think I might have even written down "in emergency,...

Daycares are cesspools of disease. That's what a coworker said to me after my baby boy had fallen ill at school for what seemed like the 100th time. I think I've coped pretty well with sleep deprivation and breastfeeding (minus the incident where we got kicked out of the restaurant...but I'm not getting into that right now...) and the first signs of extreme stubbornness—courtesy of his Dutch ancestry. But watching my child struggle to breathe, fighting pneumonia, or holding his head as he suffers dry heaves or rocking him as he rests his head on my shoulder and moans softly...it just rips my heart out. And it makes me secretly despise all those other germy little rugrats who infect my little one by touching him with their snottiness and bacteria. I know, he's probably as much to blame as they are, but my brain refuses to believe it. Nothing that vile and disgusting could come from my beautiful boy. Of course, there's one member of our household who learned firsthand...

Baby Joseph is in surgery as I write this. Jason says the next 48 hours are the most critical. We'll be thinking of you all and sending love and prayers your way much, much longer than that. They put up some pictures of the little squirt on the web site I linked to in the last post. He looks so much like Jack did when he was a newborn. Beautiful, just beautiful. I came across a quote the other day that I've been thinking about ever since. Made me feel gushy. I'll share: A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on.  —Carl Sandburg