No one should have poison ivy

...where I have poison ivy. No one. Ever.

Not even Republicans.

I just got oral steroids prescribed. I'm not screwing around with this.

Eleven years of peeing in the woods and this has never happened.

Till now.

Half a world apart

Though I know from our many years of marriage that he would prefer to spend next week pulling trout out of the Kootenai River, Mr. T has elected to make his sixteenth voyage to China tomorrow. His record at Old Company was five trips in one year (four of those trips occurred in four months). Fortunately, this will probably be his only trip this year now that he is at New Company, which still manufactures most of its products here. But he does have to make this one trip.

The Kid is at an age where he has affixed himself firmly to his dad, and resents any attempt at separation. This has gotten so bad recently that, when Mr. T leaves to go to work, The Kid has been known to fling himself onto the carpet, weeping. The Kid is the clownfish to Mr. T's anemone.

It's a unmistakable sign of the pettiness of my character that I am mildly pleased at this turn of the tables. When The Kid was a wee pup and reacted to my departures in the same way, Mr. T didn't really get how badly it sucked. Now he does. But this does present a problem for tomorrow's international trip, and as is customary, it's my job to deal with the fallout. So I've booked The Kid's favorite babysitter for Sunday and Monday, and then on Tuesday I am going to spend four hours on a plane so I can deposit The Kid with my mother, sit on the couch and press a cold cloth to my forehead. When I recover, I will execute my always carefully planned tour of favorite restaurants, accompanied by various home friends. The various members of my family will, each in their turn, annoy the living shit out of me. That is the routine. That is how it goes. It has been and ever will be thus.

My babysitter has agreed to superintend my ill-behaved herd of canines during my absence, which probably means she won't be speaking to me when I get back. The good news is that my mother actually got high-speed internet since my trip there in December. Which means that I might even blog.

For his part, Mr. T won't be too lonely. He and friend/commenter Tony, who has taken over Mr. T's former job, will find themselves in the same obscure south China city, in the same hotel, along with our Chinese friends O and P. It's almost enough to make me wish I could be there with them.

You know what's neat?

What's neat is when you go out to lunch and put your 115-year old dog into your bedroom with bowls of food and water so the youngsters can't get in there and steal her vittles, and then you come back and open the door and step into the room and, too late, realize that said 115-year old dog has taken a dump in front of the closed door and you have tracked it all over the room and smeared it on the underside of the door.

That's what's neat.

She may look like a sweet old lady in a laundry basket,

but this rabble-rousing menace will defile the bedroom carpet without a second thought.

Wherein my laptop dies a sudden and undignified death -- Updated for Idiocy

I was reading a political blog, and apparently my laptop is just as angst-ridden over the Democratic primary as I am, because it apparently had a heart attack and died while reading a post about the nomination not being decided till the convention. Yep. It suddenly just went dark and won't turn back on. Buh-bye.

It's a little less than two years old. I hate how I have to blow a grand or more every two years just to keep a decent laptop.

I'm thinking of moving to a Mac.

Updated for Idiocy: Actually, I won't be moving to Mac until my laptop actually does die...and just isn't unplugged. Ahem.

You know what's not fun?

1. Getting to your mountain house after dark on a cold February night and discovering that the roof, which has upon it two feet of rapidly melting snow, is leaking into your solarium.

2. Discovering shortly thereafter that your internet isn't working and the internet people have to come out and fiddle around with the doohickey while you twiddle your thumbs waiting to feed your addiction.

3. Downloading pictures from a brief snowshoe trip up the mountain and finding a persistent dust mote on the digital sensor.

4. Opening the refrigerator door and noticing that, just to add insult to injury, the refrigerator light is out.

None of this is fun. Nope. Not fun. Not even a little.

It's still better than being anywhere else.

Las Vegas: When you build a city entirely around appealing to the worst in people, that's usually what you get

I am an extrovert, so why shouldn’t I like Vegas? Isn’t Vegas an extroverted city?

Well, not really. Vegas is extroverted the way a mugger is extroverted. Despite the unceasing hustle and bustle, the shows and the food and the endless displays of human endeavor – I mean, there’s a show dedicated entirely to demonstrating one’s skill creating soap bubbles, for crying out loud -- Vegas doesn’t really like people. This is, I think, the most cynical place I’ve ever been. Common courtesies that you take for granted elsewhere are frequently absent here. People either behave differently while here, or this place attracts a certain kind of person.

I started noticing this on the plane from Phoenix. The three of us were seated apart – each of us in a middle seat. We approached the flight attendant and asked for help getting one of us seated with The Kid. Usually we have at least one aisle or window seat to barter when this happens, and it’s easy to get the seats arranged. We knew it would be harder this time, but a five-year old shouldn’t be required to sit between two strangers on a plane, sorry.

“These are our seats,” snapped a woman who looked like she’d swallowed a lemon. The flight attendant explained the situation. She looked over at me, sneering. (Me, of course, never Mr. T – it’s always the brood mare on the receiving end of the hostility in these situations). “Well, he has to have an aisle seat,” she spat, pointing at her partner. “Fine,” I said coolly. “Only one of us needs to sit near him,” I observed. “So it’s either that,” I said pointedly, “or you have an unattended five year old between the two of you.”

She cast me another withering glance, and addressed the flight attendant. “I hope you have some comps or something for this,” she sniffed.

At first I thought this might have nothing to do with Vegas per se – there are assholes everywhere, and this is hardly an unusual event when you fly anywhere with a kid. But after spending some time here, I noticed the same sort of attitude again and again. We were walking down the hall to look out the window near the elevator one morning. The elevator had arrived and there was someone in it. They must have mistakenly assumed we were coming to board the elevator. Well, the occupant of the elevator was courteous enough to hold it, but not courteous enough to be patient.

“HURRY IT UP!” she bellowed. I ignored her, appalled. Apparently we were unforgivably delaying the loss of all her remaining money on nickel slots.

In sum, I find the attitude of many people here ranges from indifferent to nasty. I suppose that’s what you get when you combine greed, desperation and soullessness.

Next: This would be a great city if they got rid of all the casinos.

Bison, head colds and anti-drug hysteria

Mr. T is leaving tomorrow to go slay some free-range, grass-fed meat for the freezer. Well, actually he's going to watch his Dad slay some free-range, grass-fed meat for our freezer. See, his Dad has long dreamed of a buffalo hunt, so Mr. T started trying to find a hunt they could do together that offered significantly more challenge than a standard Dick-Cheney-shooting-
fish-in-a-barrel-and-then-your-hunting-partner-in-the-face kind of deals. And he found one on 90,000 acres in Nebraska. If my father-in-law gets a buffalo, our half will tally up to about 350 pounds. The deep freeze will be full for awhile. (And lots of friends will be eating bison as well.)

But I'm getting away from my main point, which is -- as always, really -- me.
So Mr. T is leaving tomorrow, which will require me to wrangle The Kid alone till we head up to Montana next week.

Cue head cold.

I was sitting here working this afternoon and I could feel it hitting me. First the stuffy nose, then the burning eyes, then the ache in the throat. And I looked down at the dog and said, "Hey, sport, would you be so kind as to hop into your time machine and fetch me some good cold remedies from 1998?"

Remember when cold meds used to work? I used to be a big fan of DayQuil, and then Tylenol Cold and Flu for nighttime. DayQuil could power me through an entire day at Big Law Firm with even the most wretched virus. Yeah, I'd be seeing vapor trails*, but it gave me blessed, blessed relief. Then one day, they stopped working. I took a DayQuil, and continued to feel like pickled ass. Last year's bout with strep was particularly vexing. I assumed I'd developed some sort of tolerance for it until one day it dawned on me.

Meth. They took the stuff that actually works -- called pseudoephedrine -- out of the meds, because in very large quantities, pseudoephedrine can be used to make meth. Now pharmacists are required to lock up meds that contain it and weary cold sufferers must produce a photo ID and sign the products out to get them. Most cold-med makers, afraid that they would lose bidness if their stuff was locked up behind the counter, caved and stuck some weak-ass substitute in their products to keep them on the shelves.

I'm going to go ahead and call this law and order hysteria. Listen, I'm down with preventing the production of meth. It's an environmental and social menace. But this goes too far. Back in the midwest, they would simply not let you buy more than one box of cold medicine at a time, on the theory that no one has that bad a cold. That was fine. But then the meth people would simply shoplift it, leading the lawmakers to insist that pseudoephedrine must be locked up! Oh Noes!

But you know what? I don't care. If someone is determined to make meth, a signature and photo ID requirement isn't going to stop them. It's not. Because no one has ever made a fake ID! Like so much of our security-obsessed society, this is so much window dressing.

Fortunately, some manufacturers have resisted the blacklisting of pseudoephedrine, and their stuff remains behind the glass. I will be going to the pharmacy tomorrow and getting some.

Perhaps I'll be a little bit more reasonable tomorrow, and will see the sterling wisdom of this law once my sinus passages are no longer the size of bratwursts.

Which will only happen after I get some decent cold medicine.





*not really

Well, at least it wasn't black this time

What? Me vomit?

I was lying down in the living room in front of the fire when Thomas trotted over, plopped down, and promptly barfed two inches from my left shoulder.

This has left me quite speechless.

Looking forward to the post-petroleum economy

We'd made it about an hour outside Portland when The Kid announced that he was hungry, and might die if not fed. Because The Dalles, which is the town where he made this announcement, is the last readily available food for the next three hours, we scowled and pulled over. We ate lunch at a restaurant where the server dumped a generous quantity of ice water onto my right hip and butt cheek.

I looked at Mr. T. "Why is it whenever we leave the house....?" I began to think we may have a repeat of our Labor Day misadventures.

"So what do you think will go wrong with the vehicle this time?" I asked Mr. T after lunch, as we hurtled down I-84. Last June, you see, we purchased a lemon. Four weeks after we bought it, we spent $3,000 to replace the engine. Then, on our last trip, the engine refused to start at our hotel in Richland, Washington. I'll take A Brand New Alternator for 400, Alex!

But even I thought that was a rhetorical question, which is why ten minutes later, I was shocked to notice that my right foot was wet. The server hadn't hit my foot, so I knew something was up.

"It's leaking," I announced flatly to Mr. T, whose forehead was now sporting a pulsing blue vein.

"How much?" he asked through gritted teeth. I helpfully demonstrated the answer by saying "drip" every time a drop of water plunked onto the carpet. "Drip." I said. "Drip. Drip. Drip. Dripdripdripdripdrip."

Apparently it only leaks when a) it's raining and b) we're going downhill. Once we fix this new thing, the lemon will have been turned into lemonade -- a nearly perfect vehicle. There's only one problem.

"I hate this car," Mr. T snarled.

He's curled up near the fire with his laptop, looking for a new vehicle.

Where are we going and why am I sitting in this handbasket?

I once saw a bumper sticker with these exact words, and tonight it should be plastered to my forehead.

Mr. T left for his business trip tonight, and he wasn't gone twenty minutes when Thomas the Dog began heaving in a telltale manner. This alarming behavior prompted me to leap from my seat and attempt to rush him out the sliding door in my bedroom before the inevitable purge began. No luck. He made it six inches from the door before covering my newly cleaned carpet with a splash of fresh, chunky black vomit.

Black. That ain't good. Anyone want to take bets on whether I'll be making a three a.m. trip to the animal hospital tonight with a sleeping kid and puking dog?

Like my dad sometimes says, I need this like I need a paper asshole.

Calgon, take me away

I'm having a rather rough day, and during the worst part, I actually googled "how to get kid to leave me alone" just to see what would pop up. This essay burbled up, and was like freshly split aloe on a sunburn, I tell ya. Reading that was a helluva lot better than perpetual self-flagellation for not being able to stop myself from yelling at my kid.

Streptococcus pyogenes

Doesn't look like much, does it? And yet it knocked me and my husband flat for the entire week until we dragged ourselves to the doctor and each obtained a course of antibiotics. Though in most cases your own immune system will take care of our good friend Streptococcus, in a small but frightening number of cases this vicious little microbe can wreak havoc on your health.

Sometimes it causes rheumatic fever, which can permanently and gravely damage your heart valves. Though rare, untreated strep can cause deep tissues to become necrotic, or can cause lung injury or even kidney failure. I'm no antibiotic abuser -- I'm very aware of the social problem presented by profligate use of these drugs. But the risks of leaving strep untreated seem like a kind of inch-wide-mile-deep issue. The risk of these complications isn't overwhelming, but the consequences are. "We aren't treating the sore throat," remarked my nurse. "We're treating to prevent some fairly serious potential complications."

Well that, and I felt better within hours of taking my first dose. This isn't the sickest I've ever been -- I reserve that for our bout with influenza in which my extremely sturdy husband ended up in the ER -- but it runs a very close second.

We're taking it easy. We're planning to leave for Montana tomorrow instead of today.