rivka

Alex has been sick since Friday night. She's been running a fever and complaining of a headache, pains in her arms and legs, and a sore throat. Flu, in other words. We've kept her home, dosed her up with ibuprofen, and let her watch videos until her brain leaks out her ears.

When the fourth day of fever dawned, I made an appointment with her pediatrician. His reception staff made both of us put on masks (even though I don't have any symptoms) and hustled us into an exam room, bypassing the waiting room. They ordered us to keep the masks on in the exam room too.

When the pediatrician came in, I gave him a rundown of her symptoms and course and then said, "It seems like the flu; I just want to make sure it isn't the flu plus something else."

I thought he was going to cry with relief. Apparently every other parent whose kid has these symptoms has come in totally panicking about the Flupocalypse. He treated me to a perfectly unnecessary disquisition on flu prevention, treatment, and policy.

I asked him about typing the virus, just so we can make an educated decision about whether to have her vaccinated later for whichever kind she doesn't have. He said that the test has lousy specificity so there isn't any point. Based on what's going around, he thinks it's H1N1 and that she'll feel better tonight or tomorrow. If she's not better by the end of the week, I'm supposed to call back.

The incubation period for H1N1 isn't clear, but I'm hoping the rest of us missed out. We all feel more or less okay.

This week Alex's class has been learning about differences and similarities between people. Today I visited her classroom to talk about having a disability.

It was a challenge. I knew that it's much much harder to handle a group of preschoolers than it is to handle one preschooler, but I hadn't really figured out the effects of group size. Her class is about twice the size of the preschool RE classes I've taught, and it was at least twice as hard to keep them focused and with me.

I started off by having us all raise our hands as high as we could. I commented on how long and strong their arms looked, and asked them if there was anything different about my arms. "Your arms are longer," said a kid who, admittedly, was seated on my left. I agreed that my left arm is longer than theirs, then showed them just my right arm.

"My right arm is much smaller. I have one big arm and one little arm. Did anyone ever notice that before when I came in the classroom?" They all shook their heads.

I had one kid come over and try to bend my elbow. Then I asked another one to count the fingers on my right hand. (Everyone else in the class decided that they had to count their own fingers and report to me that they had five.)

"So, my arm is short, the elbow doesn't bend, and I have four fingers. That makes me different from everyone else in this room. When somebody's body is made differently or works differently from most people's, that's called being disabled." I explained that I was born this way and was this way when I was their age.

I asked them if they had ever seen anyone else whose body worked differently. One kid volunteered that her brother is bigger than she is, and I realized that I would have to be much more concrete. So I asked about people in wheelchairs (most of them had seen one) and people who can't see (most of them had also seen or heard of this). One kid volunteered that blind people can have dogs that lead them.

I had two points I wanted to make about disability. First I asked them if they thought that, when I was a little girl with one small arm, I could still play. They thought so. Then I asked them about a child who can't see and a child who can't walk - could they play? They were a little unsure, so we talked about things those kids could play.

"Sometimes, when kids see someone who is disabled, they think that person can't do anything. But if you watch, you'll see that disabled people have neat ways of doing things you might think they couldn't do. My arm is little, but see, I can use it to hold Colin. I can also type on the computer and play songs on the piano with my little hand. Alex's grandpa is blind. He can't see to read a book, but he can listen to stories on CD and he can even go hiking in the woods with special sticks to keep him on the trail. So when you see someone who is disabled, look out for their special ways of doing things."

At the end, I invited all the kids to come get a close look at my arm and hand. I told them that they could touch me if they wanted and that they could try to bend my elbow - that it wouldn't hurt me. About half the class took me up on it, including one of the teachers. The kids really liked putting their own hands up to mine and patting the smooth curve I have on the inside of my arm instead of an elbow crease.

I think it went well. It was kind of fun, too.

I made an apple pie this afternoon. At dessert time? Nobody wanted any.

WTF, family?

I need some digital images that I can use in presentations about my research. We have a medical graphics department that could probably do them for me, but if possible I'd rather hire someone from my friends list.

( Here's what I need )

If you might be interested in doing this for me, leave a comment with a price quote. Or ask any questions you'd need answers to before you could bid. Comments are screened.

Time frame on turning this around is about ten days. If you can help, that would be awesome.

Edited to add: I found someone, thanks!

That flash exploit infected one of my posts, under a friends-cut where I didn't notice it when I scanned my recent entries to see if they looked all right.

I don't remember ever having seen it on anyone else's LJ, which is how you're supposed to get infected. Consider this a heads-up - even if you don't think you were exposed, it's a good idea to check your most recent posts.

(And thanks baratron for letting me know about it!)

Edited to add: Ah, now I understand. While the exploit was still active, changed posts didn't have the four white boxes at the bottom - they had empty space because the flash thingies were invisible. The white boxes only appeared in infected posts when LJ disabled embeds. So you could easily be infected without ever seeing weird content in someone else's post... and if I'm on your friends list, you probably were.

I put Alex to bed about twenty minutes ago. She's up there singing at the top of her lungs:

Well, Joshua was said to be a mighty foe
Cause he marched right up to old Jericho
Blowed his horn and the walls come down
Better not build a wall around your home town.

More four-year-olds should be familiar with the works of the Chad Mitchell Trio. ...Although I think we should probably hold off on teaching her to sing The John Birch Society.

After Society of Behavioral Medicine last year I wound up corresponding with a prominent researcher in my field who recently published a book on HIV denialists. He said something to me about how we should really try to put together a symposium on the subject for next year's SBM.

A symposium is an extended session, 90 minutes for just three presenters and a discussant. (Compare to paper sessions like the one I was in last year, in which each person gets just 15 minutes to present.) The presentations are supposed to relate to each other, providing multiple perspectives on an issue. It's a format with a lot of possibilities, and of course I was flattered that he suggested it.

Well, the SBM submission deadline is fast approaching, so I got a steely grip on my usual diffidence and wrote to him to ask if he was still interested. And he is. And he thinks that I should be the one to chair the symposium. Yikes! I've never done this before, and I was kind of hoping that he'd take the reins. But I wrote to someone else who's done a lot of research on this topic, and she said she'd be happy to join the symposium. Now we just need a discussant - someone to summarize, contextualize, and problematize our presentations. I'm hoping that one of them can come up with a good person to ask, since they're both more connected than I am.

And I need to write a symposium overview, which means that I need to figure out what a symposium overview is supposed to say.

And I need to write my own abstract for my part of the presentation. For which I first need to analyze my data. All by Thursday at midnight.

No worries, right?

Incidentally, if anyone's curious, SBM put my slides for the presentation I gave in Montreal up on the web for all to see. (With my permission, of course.) It's here, but be warned that it's a PDF of a Powerpoint presentation. In case you're allergic to that sort of thing.

Last night at 11:20 the power went out. I had just finished pumping milk - thank heavens - I still had the bottle of milk in my hand. I quickly stowed it away, grabbed a flashlight, and went to call the power company.

The automated emergency line took my report. Usually it has something to say about how long the outage is estimated to last, but not this time. Looking out the window, I could see Maryland General Hospital all lit up a block away, but on our street there was nothing. No streetlights, no house lights.

The phone rang. It was a real human calling me back from BGE. She said that they didn't have any information about an outage in my area and why didn't I go down and try throwing my breaker. She would wait if I wanted her to.

"It's not just us," I told her. "The whole street is dark."

"Well, you're the only one who called in. I can go ahead and send someone out, but if it turns out to be a problem with your equipment there will be an $80 charge for the service call."

"Send someone out to our house? It's not just us!"

"Well, you're our only starting point."

I told her not to send anyone unless we called back. I didn't really want to wait up past midnight for a service call.

After I hung up, we heard sirens and saw flashes of colored lights outside. We jammed on our shoes and went outside. A BGE pickup truck sped by, orange lights flashing. and rounded the corner on to Read Street. I followed it. Read Street was jammed full of equipment - at least four line trucks. Guys in hard hats stood around in clumps.

Michael approached one of them and came back to report: "It's a planned outage. They're doing some work."

"Okay, let's go to bed." As I undressed, the phone rang. It was the lady from BGE. She had just figured out that it was a planned outage. We should have gotten a letter, she told Michael. The power would be off for eight hours.

That was nearly ten hours ago. We still don't have any electricity. I'm starting to fret about the food. Also, I'm hungry. Michael lit the stove with our grill lighter to make me some tea, but we don't want to open the fridge to get out anything to eat.

I'm writing this on my laptop, but we don't have any wireless to post it.

Later: I called BGE at 9:30. The power should be back on in about an hour, they said. I scrounged some bread and cookies from the pantry. Unbelievably, Alex is still asleep - when she wakes up, I'll take the kids out for breakfast.

The thing about living in a row house is that it can be dark inside even in the daytime. Our living room is a center room, and it doesn't get a whole lot of natural light.

11:00 Still no power. Coming back from breakfast we saw four or five line trucks arrayed along the alley behind our house, basket arms extended and full of linemen. Called BGE again and was assured that we'd have power by 11:30. Uh huh. I asked if there would be any compensation to customers and she reacted with total incomprehension. I wasn't being charged for the power I wasn't receiving, so why did I think I had any claim on BGE beyond that?

If it was storm damage or some other disaster, I would totally understand. But this is scheduled work.

I wonder how long the power would have to be out before I would stop automatically flipping the switch when I walked into a dark room.

Final update: When I left to take the kids to a birthday party at 12:15, the power was still out. According to Michael, it finally came on at 1:50, went off again at 2:15, and finally came on for good at 2:30.

Unfortunately, in the interim Alex overheard me discussing with a neighbor what action I planned to take against BGE if my freezer stash of breastmilk thawed. Now she is asking inconvenient questions like "Mommy, what's firebombing?"

We went to a cookout yesterday at the home of one of Alex's friends. This little girl only wears dresses and is always exquisitely dressed. (Perhaps because of her influence, this summer Alex has started refusing to wear shorts or pants. Although we insist sometimes, for things like hiking in the woods.) Well, at the cookout, the mom revealed the secret of her daughter's large and impeccable wardrobe: "There's this great thrift shop up on North Avenue..."

So today we checked it out. And it was the least prepossessing piece of urban blight imaginable. North Avenue is a sketchy street to begin with. The thrift shop had a blank, stained concrete wall facing the street, with a dirty old sign saying "Village Thrift." You had to park in a lot surrounded by a high fence, up against a housing project, and walk around to the back of this huge blank concrete edifice. There was no directional signage. You couldn't even tell if anyone was there.

But inside... whoa.

I took a quick glance at the media section near the door. Thrift store book sections are usually a waste of time - Harlequin romances and earnest Christian tracts - but I quickly found myself balancing a big stack of classic juvenile/YA literature. And then the video section: all the classic works of Disney, movie musicals, the Anne of Green Gables miniseries with Megan Followes...



When we tore ourselves away and made it back to the girls' dresses section, we found the selection to be equally good. We pulled about fifteen dresses right away, then winnowed them down to eight. None showing any significant wear. Some had obviously only been worn once or twice.

/

We even let Alex buy this ridiculous Christmas dress, because why not? It was $2.50. It will be a nice addition to our dress-up clothes after the holiday.



Our total, for eight nice dresses, nine books, and ten videos - eleven, if you count both halves of the Anne miniseries - was $22.74.

$22.74. Isn't that ridiculous?

I'm kicking myself, because just Saturday I went to my usual upscale consignment store and dropped about a hundred bucks on the bulk of Alex's winter wardrobe. Okay, so those clothes were largely better brands - although two of the dresses I got today are from Land's End - and I got some beautiful things that I'm totally happy with. But still. Had I but known.

I never in a million years would've stopped at this place on my own. It looks too awful. I just can't believe the selection they have. Where on earth do they get their things?

I often buy thin-sliced boneless pork chops. The package used to have a sticker that said "Thin Sliced - Great For Scaloppini!"

Now it says: "Thin Sliced - Serves More People!"

It was three-quarters of a pound of meat, cut into six chops. Man, I'm just thinking about someone buying that package so that everyone gets a chop, and... yeah.