Life's an adventure

Little diva in training

2011-07-17T22:38:00.000-06:00

I mean, seriously. Is there anything cuter than a cowgirl?

Launching: Honkytonk Diva Designs

2011-07-17T22:02:00.004-06:00

Now that I've let my blog lay fallow for so long, it pains me to use it purely for personal marketing purposes. Well, a little.

I'm launching a little leather-tooling business on the side. It's fun. I have been so jazzed to use my creativity for something other than putting words on a page. And crafting, I believe, fills "the well" that you need so you can produce other art. So I think leather work will improve my writing.

COMING SOON: Check out HonkyTonkDiva.com, or catch me at the Jackson Hole People's market on Wednesday, July 20. Pictures of actual leather items to come soon, I promise.

On hold

2011-04-17T22:34:00.002-06:00

It's been almost exactly a year since I updated the old blog... I'm too busy. I have other stuff going on. I'm on Facebook. Excuses, excuses.

Kid is growing like a proverbial weed, talking up a storm. She'll be 2.5 in June.

Still working, still writing. It's been a while since I worked up a sweat or sweated over my unfinished novel.

What have you been up to?

Marathon giving to baby

2010-04-25T11:16:00.002-06:00

I wish I'd known about this in time to "gear up" for this marathon giving. It's kinda emotionally exhausting.

From AskDrSears.com
The time between the ages of fourteen and eighteen months is very hard for mothers. The high-energy toddler wants to do everything, but he still needs mother involved “big time.” Mothers of one-year-olds need to gear up for this marathon spurt of giving, because the tendency is to think “Ah, now he’s one – I’ll be able to ease off.” You will eventually, but not yet. Hang in there through age eighteen months, then be alert for signs that your toddler is trying to make space between you. Some mothers might tend to hover and smother and continue to hang on, but remember, the one-and-a-half-to-two-year-old needs to become his own person. You will see these efforts more and more. At first you won’t believe your eyes. Your toddler will do what he sees you doing. She will tend doll babies, get out pots and pans, want to play at the sink, dig in the dirt with spoons. You name it – the possibilities are endless. She’ll want you to pretend with her a bit. It’s fun to be a dog or a lion, but she really only needs you to get her started. Pretend tea parties or picnics where you gobble up everything she hands you don’t require much involvement from you.

Walking the warm weather

2010-03-29T15:17:00.002-06:00

After months of pulling up on kitchen chairs and cruising along the coffee table’s edge, Desi took her first steps at 11 months.
She practiced walking back and forth across the living room or in stores. She worked on her up-and-down stairs techniques. But because it’s been winter here, socks or shoes have been a requirement, and she hasn’t done much dirt.
At PB & J Child Care Center, where she started March 1, her caregivers were surprised that our 14-month-old walked OK on the carpet but didn’t want to try the uneven surface outdoors.
It’s not that we want to raise her in a bubble. Walking on ice, snow, slush and slopes is tough for able-bodied adults. Desi’s outdoor time was spent largely in a stroller or backpack, on a sled or in arms. In her three-month walking career, mountain valley surfaces haven’t been optimal. So we plotted a camping trip to warmer climes for the last week of March. Our plan was influenced by a few factors: warmth, distance, cost and play surfaces.
I’ll be the first to admit we adults didn’t accomplish much during our eight-day trip. We slept, drove, ate, biked and walked. But Desi’s walking was pretty amazing. In Beatty, Nev., on the eastern edge of Death Valley National Park, she held Scott’s hand and walked up and down the gravel RV park. She’d trip and almost fall to her knees before he’d catch her and haul her back up.
In Lone Pine, Calif., she made laps, unassisted, on a circuit between the Airstream steps, picnic table, step stool and camp chairs along Diaz Lake.
She started saying “walkie” and sticking out a hand when she wanted to walk with one of us. Sometimes she wants to walk with both of us at the same time and kicks her knees up high in a not-so-subtle hint for us to swing her between us.
Other times, she squirms to get down and shakes her head vigorously when we try to hold her hand. More than once, she shook her head so hard, it threw her off balance and she landed on her derriere.
It was at the Panamint Springs Resort in Death Valley that her proprioceptors seemed to kick in. Something about the roughest gravel campground in the Lower 48 made her pick up her feet high enough and set them down precisely enough to get fluid at this new sport.
When she fell, she sat in the rocks and examined them. “I meant to do that. Hmm, these rocks are fascinating.” Scott tried to show her how to throw one, but her release point needs work. It kept falling behind her.
We sat under the Airstream’s awning for a couple of days as temperatures soared to 80 degrees and watched Desi’s skills develop. By the time we zipped over to Zion National Park, she was walking all over the place, even negotiating a loose-bark playground surface without many falls and giggling like a maniac over the slide. In the Zion visitor center, she acquired “Baby Coyote,” a puppet two-thirds her own size, who has become a walking pal. It’s a good thing he’s roughly dirt-colored, because he drags on the ground much of the time.
By the time day care resumes after spring break, Desi should be an old hand at recess. Or should I say old foot?
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Features editor Johanna Love is convin ced that outdoor walking will be easier on her wallet than grocery store strolling. She writes every other week on her experiences with parenting.

Ladybug Bed Hog rules nest

2010-03-17T10:09:00.000-06:00

My 60-pound mixed-breed dog has nothing on my 22-pound baby when it comes to occupying prime real estate in bed.
Although I try to start out sleeping 18 inches from the edge of the mattress, by 6:30 a.m. I’m perilously close to landing on the floor.
Our sleeping space is ruled by an angel-faced bed hog in ladybug pajamas.
She takes advantage of any rollover, readjustment or nighttime feeding, scootching closer and closer. Much of the time, she lies on her right side, legs at a 90-degree angle, feet braced against me. If an earthquake strikes in the middle of the night, she’ll keep her balance. Sometimes she kneads my back with her toes. Occasionally she turns completely sideways so she can touch both parents at once. Or she flops around onto her hands and knees and starts sleep-crawling, head-butting me awake.
I haven’t been getting my beauty sleep lately. Can you tell? Wait, don’t answer that.
Prepregnancy, I would have said that sleeping was one of my talents.
Living in an industrial part of Memphis, Tenn., as a child, I learned early to tune out trains and traffic. During summers on my grandfather’s farm, there were chirping crickets, lowing cows and crowing roosters to ignore.
By my freshman year of college, I could sleep right through the clanging clamor of a brass Big Ben alarm clock without hearing a thing. My roommate hated me. After late nights slinging catfish fillets at a family restaurant and driving two hours to type out colorful yet technically lame reviews of junior college basketball games for a nearby daily newspaper, I rarely got enough sleep. I snored through so many classes, I had to get rid of Big Ben and find a clock that didn’t turn itself off. And I quit signing up for early classes.
Thankfully, I stumbled into a career that allows me to not own an alarm clock. I used to get up when I woke up. Imagine that: listening to your body.
In the old days, I’d sleep for a solid six, seven and a half or nine hours. Nine hours is optimal for me, especially if I’m exercising much; that’s plenty of time for my body to recover from a long hike or bike.
Pregnancy produced a host of sleep problems: big belly limited body position options; uterus pressure on bladder required several nighttime bathroom visits; everything swelled, including nasal membranes, which led to snoring on my part and loud complaining from the husband. Folks say the crappy sleep of pregnancy prepares you for the crappy sleep of motherhood. I concur.
These days, I’m lucky if I get three hours of uninterrupted slumber. Ladybug Bed Hog yells at me, demanding a midnight snack. And one at 3, 5 and 6 a.m. Or she poops and needs a fresh diaper.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Until 5 months of age, Desi slept in her bassinet next to our bed. Then we moved her to a crib in the room next door. That lasted for almost six months, when she wormed her way back into our bed. And there she has stayed.
Variously called co-sleeping, bed-sharing or simply sleeping in the family bed, this arrangement is common in most of the world, but oft-frowned-upon in America. There’s a raging debate about it among parents, pediatricians and buttinskies.
Co-sleeping is one of the core tenets of attachment parenting, a style of child rearing that also espouses breast-feeding as long as the child wants and comforting baby rather than letting him cry. Proponents say bed-sharing promotes breast-feeding and helps children feel secure. Some studies have shown that a mother acts like a pacemaker, keeping baby’s breathing even and calm. Makes sense.
It also probably helps parents feel secure. For anxiety-prone mommies like me, it’s nice to be able to reach over, feel baby’s chest moving and know she’s still breathing. I can even multitask, sometimes drifting back to sleep and feeding the baby at the same time.
Our pediatrician accepts it. Books I’ve read say it’s OK so long as the parents aren’t drunk or stoned and might roll over and crush the baby.
Pfft. I’m a little more worried about breaking my own face when Ladybug Bed Hog pushes me onto the floor.
Having a baby in bed means it takes roughly 11 hours – going to bed at 9 and not getting up until 8 – for me to get nine hours of sleep. More often than I’d like, I have to stay up late getting my act together. Then it takes a while for my brain to calm down enough to snooze, so I get closer to seven hours of shuteye.
As the nights tick by, and she’s almost 15 months old, I do seem a bit more rested. Or maybe I’m just getting used to getting by on less sleep. Coffee shops are getting a disproportionate slice of my disposable income.
And there isn’t much sweeter in the world than the face of a happy, sleeping child.
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Features editor Johanna Love is looking forward to spring break and the excellent sleep she always gets in her vintage Airstream. Find her musings on parenting in this space every other week.

Adventures in toddler food

2010-03-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

A week after my baby’s birth, feeding her was easy.

Constant, but easy. Insert Tab A into Slot B at least 10 times per day for 30 minutes at a time. For more than three months, feeding the baby was my full-time job.

Fourteen months later, she requires less time to eat, but figuring out what to feed her is the trick. What she liked one day she refuses the next: tight lips, vigorous shaking of the head from side to side.

Conversely, it’s impossible to convey in print the enthusiasm my child radiates when she sees a food she wants.

“Mmmm!” she says, simultaneously thrusting a hand out toward the banana, frozen blueberries or teething biscuit.

Fruit and whole grains, no problem. Frozen squash chunks, peas, carrots? Bring ’em on.

Although we avoided cow’s milk until 11 months because of allergy worries, she loves it now. Cheese? Yes, please.

Blended-up food in a jar? That’s for babies. That’s so last year. Head shake.

Protein has been the tough thing to talk her into. She’ll eat eggs – scrambled, fried, boiled, in a quiche – but not much else.

I bought her some pricey processed meat sticks marketed for babies. She loved them. I read the ingredients. They were basically just hot dogs. So I started buying her turkey dogs or all-beef hot dogs. She loved them. Since then, it’s been brought to my attention that hot dogs are junk food. Oh. I began searching for hot-dog-like foods.

Expensive organic chicken-apple sausage? Head shake. Tofu dog? Head shake. Plain ol’ chicken breast cut into strips? Head shake.

Registered dietitian Therese Metherell says hot dogs may be cheap and easy, but they’re not a good choice for a toddler.

“It’s not any different than giving her candy,” she said. “Nutritionally, it’s just junk.”

So what to try? Deli turkey, canned tuna. Tuna has the added benefit of fatty acids that are good for brain development.

In a 20-minute phone call that admittedly annoyed my coworkers, Therese revamped my daughter’s diet plan. She recommends the California Cuisine Food Pyramid rather than the U.S. Department of Agriculture one from decades ago.

Our pediatrician suggested whole milk for Desi, so for the past couple months, my husband and I have been drinking it, too, although I know it’s not good for my cholesterol. Therese says the whole-milk prescription for toddlers is outdated.

In summer 2008, the American Academy of Pediatrics revised its recommendations: Children 2 and older should drink skim or 1 percent milk. For those age 1 to 2 who are either overweight or have a family history of obesity, high cholesterol or heart disease, the use of low-fat milk “would be appropriate.”

But how can her brain develop without fat? Avocado, nut butters (we’ve avoided peanuts so far because of allergy concerns, but I’ll research almond or cashew butter) or veggies cooked in canola or olive oils. Omega-3 eggs have good fat.

“The whole idea is to get the fat in, and not saturated fat,” Metherell said. “She doesn’t really need cheese or anything.”

But she loves cheese.

“Then use low-fat cheese or goat cheese.”

Is all this really necessary? I mean, she’s a year old.

“We know now that vascular changes, raising of blood cholesterol can affect heart disease risk in infancy,” Therese said. “She should be on a heart-healthy eating plan.”

Wow. That gives me a lot to think about.

“You have the upper hand here, because she can’t go to the grocery store yet,” Therese says. “She can’t go to McDonald’s with her friends.”

At least we’re careful about not letting her have too much sugar. I had been buying mandarin orange fruit cups sweetened with Splenda. Then I discovered that Splenda isn’t a good idea for kids. It hasn’t been proven safe for them, and artificial sweeteners are, well, artificially sweet. Hypersweet. So now I’m getting whole mandarin oranges (thank goodness it’s the season), which are a hit. I plan to peel and freeze a bunch of the sections for when we don’t have fresh ones on hand, it’s not the season, or she just wants to gnaw on something frozen because of teething pain.

That’s a Therese trick, too. She prepares a bunch of food at a time and freezes it. She doesn’t call them leftovers, she calls them “planned-overs.”

On her first birthday, Desi got her first taste of pure, unadulterated sugar. We got her a slice of banana cake from the grocery deli, covered in frosting. She couldn’t stop giggling, with an amazed look on her face. “Hee hee hee.” This is for me? “Hee hee hee.” Really? Awesome.

But that was a special occasion. She doesn’t get ice cream, cake, juice or high-sugar cookies every day. The longer we can keep up the low-sugar habit, the less she’ll crave it, I hope.

On a hang-out-with-Daddy day recently, Desi got a Kit Kat. Luckily, my husband stopped by my office after having given her only a quarter of the package. That little chocolate-covered wafer packed more than 5 grams of sugar. Sheesh. No wonder she was hyper.

The good thing about being careful what we feed Desi? She’s interested in anything we’re eating, so it gives us incentive to eat healthier things.

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Johanna is psyched to try recipes from The Toddler Bistro, a book just for babes.

Fur-children get demoted

2010-01-19T17:06:00.004-07:00

Our dogs ate elk pot roast and sliced deli meat on Monday morning.

No, it wasn’t a special occasion. We just forgot to buy dog food.

To add insult to injury, we decided to stop buying the $79-a-bag kibble that they’ve enjoyed for years. It’s generic time, pups.

This is just the latest in a yearlong string of decisions, conscious or not, that have demoted Mojo and Java from fur-children to dogs. (See their puppy pictures here... of course I saved them. I have dozens.)

For years after we brought Java home from the Teton Valley shelter in 1998 and picked Mojo out of a squirming mass of unwanted puppies in 2002, they got top billing in conversation, picture frames, hiking decisions and on furniture.

Java was ring bearer at our wedding. I baked homemade peanut-butter biscuits for them. I organized a 1st birthday party for Mojo and as many of his brothers, sisters and cousins we could round up. For short-haired Mojo’s first winter, we got him a fleece coat, although I’m sure other dogs made fun of him. Regularly, Java and Mojo got to go shopping at Valley Feed or PetCo, picking out their own treats.

They rode in the car almost every trip and came with us on vacations. Anxious by nature, Mojo single-mouthedly ruined a half-dozen seat belts and applied nose prints to every window. Java probably made us prematurely deaf by barking at other dogs.

We passed up great housing opportunities that didn’t allow dogs. How could we get rid of family members? What kind of people do that? Monsters, we decided.

Part of the reason we didn’t have kids earlier was that I couldn’t imagine loving a child as much as as I love Mojo. He was the center of my world. Nightly, he’d dive under the comforter and curl up at my abdomen, emerging only when the lack of oxygen activated his self-preservation instinct.

When my pregnancy-induced snoring exiled Scott to the couch, he and I would argue over who got to sleep with Mojo. I imagined that within a year or two, our baby would also fight for the right to snuggle.

Before we brought Desi home from the hospital, we did what experts advised – gave the dogs a hospital onesie for them to smell. Who knows if it mattered. Java didn’t pay much attention to her. “Did it bring food?” she sniffed. “Is it food?”

But Mojo seemed distressed that we were lavishing attention on the new “puppy.” He was no longer the baby in the house. He got it, and he didn’t like it.

In a fit of jealous rage, Mojo stole Desi’s pacifier toy and chewed the end off the nipple. Despite a few token face-licks – designed to ensure extra petting? – he ignored her, at best, and growled a warning in his crankier moments.

In a year, it hasn’t gotten that much better. At best, he runs from her sticky-fingered advances. At worst, he steals her teething biscuits if they land on the floor and has taken pieces of hot dog from her hand, less than gently.

With both adult humans working full time, we barely get enough time with baby. “Pet Mojo,” my husband has to remind me as I rush in the door making goo-goo eyes at Desi. I give him a 15-second snuggle and head for the baby. “Don’t forget Java,” he says. Poor Java gets the five-second version, but she might be too old to care.

There’s just not enough love to go around.

The dogs hardly ever get to ride in the car any more.

They go for a week or more without Milk Bones.

The pictures in frames on my desk all show Desi. One of my newer coworkers actually said, “You have a dog?” the other day.

Some people go as far as to surrender their pets after having children, said Corie Rybak, manager of the Teton County/Jackson Animal Shelter.

“People with a new baby just become overwhelmed,” she said. “There’s so much to do. Dogs kind of fall down the list.”

Notoriously independent, cats are more often surrendered because of children’s allergies, she said, but dogs have a hard time adjusting to less attention from their people. Like a jealous sibling, they act out. They bark, whine, shred things.

“They’re basically bored,” Rybak said. “No one’s paying them any attention.”

Depending on the dog’s breed and temperament, it can wind up getting even more love once the child grows up enough to play with it. That is, if it can withstand the year or so of neglect without developing bad habits.

My 2010 resolution was to get outside and play more, and I plan to take the dogs along. I will try to give them more attention than just the odd snuggle when guilt overtakes me.

And I hope Desi can help by quickly learning to give gentle pets instead of toddler smacks.

Now that she’s learned to drop food to them from her high chair, Desi is a little bit more popular with her fur-siblings. I’m hoping that trend continues.

Do favorite toys predict career choices?

2010-01-05T11:26:00.002-07:00

“Play is children’s work,” says Dr. William Sears, “and toys are their tools.”

So if you want your child to become an astronaut, I suppose you’d better pony up for that chemistry set. Perhaps we’ll have an onslaught of veterinarians 20 years from now, since thousands of children clamored for Santa to bring them Zhu Zhu pets, those mechanical hamsters.

Since columnists spend this month prognosticating, I’m going to throw out a prediction. Desi will either run away to join the circus, become a professional athlete, a fortune-teller or pool shark.

Why? At age 1, my child is obsessed with balls.

Ball was the first inanimate object she recognized and named. Sure, she said Mama, Dada and dog, but we’re in her face all the time. She was showered with stuffed animals, noisemakers and whatsits but prefers the world’s simplest action toy.

She asks for a ball, lights up when she sees one and points at it – that universal toddler gesture for “Hey! Gimme that!”

I bought her a real baseball and secondhand mitt. As soon as she could sit up, we were rolling the ball back and forth to her across the floor. It’s one of a dozen or so now in her collection.

I reason that the balls are good for developing motor skills and interacting with others: Put the ball in a cup. Dump it out. Repeat. Play catch, or perhaps more accurately, fetch. She’s even become an all-star at crawling with a ball in one hand.

Balls seem to materialize for her, much like the over-eager retriever who roots out a mangled tennis ball on every walk. We were in the produce aisle of the grocery store the other day, and Desi looked around in wonderment and said “Ball!” Oranges, tomatoes, onions, cantaloupes. I swear I haven’t dropped her directly on her head. We bought an onion – smelly ball? – which she held until I wrested it away for checkout.

Balls extend to her room decor: polka dots. She has two round, puffy couch pillows that resemble cheerleader pom-poms, and calls those balls. I’m sure as soon as she will wear mittens, she’ll like snowballs, although her initial reaction to packed snow was lukewarm.

Before a ball became the be-all and end-all, Desi liked to play with other low-tech items: the plastic tops of Gerber baby food containers, spoons. There’s really no need to drop a bundle on toys, I’ve discovered.

My friend Jen Solis’ child, Sully, became transfixed by trains when he was 18 months old. A year later, and he’s still cuckoo for choo-choos. They’ve helped him focus and hone motor skills, his mom says. “He’ll play intently with the train for hours if we let him,” Solis said, and Sully also loves to watch videos about toy trains on YouTube. “Sully watches those studiously, like he is plotting his own episode.”

Maybe Sully will become a mechanical engineer, a transportation expert or a conductor. He’s extremely organized when creating a track pattern, so the Solis family is guessing he might excel at business. “Whatever he ends up doing, I am certain that some of these train building/playing skills will be utilized,” Solis said.

Marianne Szymanski, author of A Parent’s Essential Guide to Smart Toy Choices, says good toys should promote imagination, motor skills, self-esteem or speech. I think that so far, Desi’s motor skills are promoting self-esteem. Let’s hope that continues through middle school.

Her favorite Christmas morning toy was a cardboard box that housed a countertop appliance. She leapt up on it, body surfed for a few seconds, slid down, repeated.

Desi also likes to dance to any kind of music, and those annoying holiday singing toys entrance her. She does her special version of the Twist: seated position, palms up, furious trunk rotation, big smile.

As she’s learning self-propulsion these days, Desi has a couple of toys that she can walk behind. One has alligators that clack their wooden snouts as the contraption rolls, and she’s started to put a ball inside a tin can on top of the gators so they make a terrific noise. Another plays music and teaches shapes and colors. Her friend Jesse Chambers has a lawnmower-style push toy, and Aundra Guttormson has one that carts around a crate of wooden blocks.

Sears says toys are for adults, too. “Give toys that you will enjoy playing with, and then take time to play with your child.”

I like to play catch as much as the next gal, but the only way I can see myself enjoying her walk-behind toys is if they had a higher purpose. I’m sure I could make millions if I could invent one that doubles as a vacuum cleaner or even had a Swiffer cloth underneath.

Although Andy and Jean Schwartz owned Jackson’s toy store for two decades, their children didn’t run amok around Broadway Toys, Jean said. “My kids didn’t really play with toys,” Jean said. “They were more social. They played with other kids.” But she does recommend a toy almost as old as the ball. “I think wooden blocks are your best bet.”

They’re on our wish list. Maybe we can convince Desi that a letter-embossed cube is the new sphere. Then she might have a shot at architecture, or at least bricklaying or journalism.

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Features editor Johanna Love writes on motherhood every other week in her spare time: when not stacking cups, singing the alphabet and turning around the push toy.

Films of the decade

2010-01-04T08:40:00.003-07:00

Film critic Peter Rainer chose the best movies of the decade for the Christian Science Monitor. I've only seen two of the 10... time to get renting! How many have you seen, and which were your favorites?

Before Sunset
Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy. "peerlessly romantic ... language itself here, as it pours out of these two in great gusts and digressions, is a sensual thrill."

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
"Set in small-town Romania in 1987 ... a college girl (the great Anamaria Marinca) covertly arranges for her friend’s abortion. The consequences of this illegality, in a society where all human activity appears to be monitored by the state, are sorrowing."

No Country For Old Men
"Best picture of 2007.) It’s about the human response to death and dying as embodied in three men – a thief-hunter (Josh Brolin), a lawman (Tommy Lee Jones), and a terminator (Javier Bardem) – and it has an allegorical power that at times is close to biblical."

The Pianist
"Roman Polanski drew deeply on his boyhood experiences as a Jewish child being hunted down in World War II Poland in this poetically stark adaptation of the wartime memoir of Polish pianist and Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman, played with unerring grace by Adrien Brody."

Sideways
"About an oenophile (Paul Giamatti) whose crankiness is the thinnest of veneers covering his sadness."

Spirited Away
"A 10-year-old girl, moving to the suburbs with her parents, discovers a tunnel leading to a world that might have astounded even Lewis Carroll."

Time Out
"Laurent Cantet’s 2001 movie about a husband and father, suddenly unemployed, who pretends he has a lucrative new job, seems doubly prescient these days."

Waltz With Bashir
Filmmaker Ari Folman was a 19-year-old Israeli soldier in the 1982 war in Lebanon, from which he fashioned this one-of-a-kind animated memoir.

Y Tu Mamá También
Exhilaratingly comic and sexy, it registers, finally, a note of rapturous melancholy.

The Wind Will Carry Us
"So rich and lyrical that the imagery seems suspended in time forever."

On babies, boobies and booze

2009-12-08T09:44:00.005-07:00

C’mon, spill it.

If you were a drinker before you got pregnant, you probably fantasized during pregnancy about a nice glass of Chianti. No amount of alcohol has been proven to be safe to a developing fetus. The fear of a developmentally delayed child with fetal alcohol syndrome is verbally beaten into us all in the books and at the doctor’s office.

And since giving birth, you’ve likely nursed a bottle of beer, which some say stimulates milk production. You gladly proffer your glass as the wine bottle gets passed around.

Whew. Your nine months of teetotalism is over. But should it be?

Social attitudes, scientific research and myths are all over the place.

Among the facts backed up by research: Alcohol can slow the milk-ejection reflex. Babies who taste alcohol in breast milk nurse more eagerly, but for a shorter duration. They make up for that at the next feeding. They tend to sleep more fitfully. Prolonged exposure to alcohol can cause delays in gross motor development.

Everybody seems to know the term “pump and dump.” As if, after a night of overconsumption, you could squeeze every ounce of contaminated milk from your breasts, throw it out and start fresh. That’s not exactly how it works.

You are what you eat, and drink, and alcohol that a mother drinks is secreted into her breast milk. Time is the only way to eliminate alcohol from the body. So the only reason to pump breast milk after drinking would be to relieve engorgement.

I’m the first to admit that I can tend toward excess. As my baby gets older and breast milk is no longer her only source of food, I feel more comfortable carousing on occasion.

I bring up the topic with friends, and they’re nervous. Almost nobody wants to admit to drinking alcohol and breast-feeding. It’s as though they’re afraid the Department of Family Services is going to hijack their Facebook accounts, show up at the door and drag their child away from them.

Technically, Wyoming is one of few states in which a social worker doesn’t have the power to remove a child from her home, according to spokeswoman Juliette Rule. And she doesn’t field many calls regarding boozing and breast-feeding. But more on that later.

I know what you’re thinking. This wino is now going to drum up lots of research to justify her, ahem, “cough medicine.”

The breast-feeding advocacy group La Leche League International, in its book The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding, says “when a breast-feeding mother drinks occasionally or limits her consumption to one drink or less per day, the amount of alcohol her baby receives has not been proven to be harmful.”

Dr. Jack Newman, a member of La Leche’s Health Advisory Council, says in the handout “More Breast-feeding Myths” that “reasonable alcohol intake should not be discouraged.”

“As is the case with most drugs, very little alcohol comes out in the milk,” Newman says. “The mother can take some alcohol and continue breast-feeding as she normally does. Prohibiting alcohol is another way we make life unnecessarily restrictive for nursing mothers.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on drugs classifies alcohol as one of dozens of “maternal medications usually compatible with breast-feeding.” In their notes, they say large amounts of alcohol can result in “drowsiness, diaphoresis, deep sleep, weakness, decrease in linear growth, abnormal weight gain.”

Of course, metabolizing alcohol is different for everyone, based on weight, alcohol and food intake and your body’s individual makeup.

Even the experts choose their words carefully. Nobody wants to be the person who seems to condone behavior that could harm a child.

Pediatrician Dr. Jim Little says that “moderation in everything is reasonable,” and an “occasional” drink isn’t likely to bother a breast-feeding child, but drinking often leads to bad judgement.

“Moms who drink are thinking about other things than their kids,” Little said. “They don’t pay attention sometimes.”

Teton County lactation consultant Janet Wood said making blanket statements is dangerous, because one person might consider a single drink “moderate drinking,” and another might think that means a six-pack. She suggests pumping breast milk ahead of time if there’s a special occasion on your calendar.

“If you have a couple drinks, you might feel a little happy, there will be a little alcohol in your breast milk,” Wood said. “If the party goes late, you have quite a few more drinks and end up prancing around your friend’s living room wearing nothing but a bearskin rug, there will be a lot of alcohol in the breast milk.”

Overindulging on occasion happens, Wood said, and when the effects of alcohol have worn off, “it’s fine to nurse again.”

For the paranoid or overly scientific moms, a company has created a home test, Milkscreen. Squeeze a couple of drops of breast milk onto the test strip, and if its alcohol content is above 0.02 percent, it will change color. The company advises finding an alternate source of food for the baby, waiting a while and trying again.

Carolyn Smith Fernald, a former Jackson resident, said she pumped “for two months” to ensure enough milk to last 10-week-old Fox while she “went out and really cut loose” for her bachelorette party. At 6 a.m. the next day, the milk ran out and she had to nurse the baby.

“I don’t know if he was just giving me a break because it was my first hangover in a year, or if there was still alcohol in my milk six hours after my last drink,” Fernald says, “but Fox slept the rest of the day. And for the record, I felt really guilty.”

Guilt is one burden that a new mother doesn’t need, in my opinion. I agree with Fernald that “the health and emotional benefits Fox received from nursing for 22 months far outweighed any negative impacts he had from the few times (yes, it happened more than once!) that I found myself ‘nursing under the influence.’”

Rule, spokeswoman for the Wyoming DFS, said her organization doesn’t seek “perfect parenting.”

“That’s not the standard,” Rule said. “It’s fine enough parenting. We’re not actively policing parking lots of bars looking for parents who are doing wrong. We have whole communities’ eyes and ears doing that.”

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After a lovely Christmas party on Saturday, features editor Johanna Love is swearing off alcohol. At least until Friday.

An attitude of gratitude

2009-11-29T15:14:00.001-07:00

Sometimes I catch myself being too critical. OK, often I’m too critical.

I hunt out typographical errors on signs, in advertisements, on children’s clothing manufactured in Taiwan. I snicker.

I snipe at my husband for not doing something the way I would have done it. His way is almost always faster. Mine tends to be more thorough.

For instance, I give him hints about how to tell if our child’s pajamas are on backward. “Usually,” I say, “the manufacturer puts the size marking in the back. Usually there’s an embellishment — piping, applique, screen print — on the front. Usually it snaps in the back, but sometimes the snaps or buttons are on the shoulders.”

Scott doesn’t take kindly to my pajama policing. I get it.

Really, what does it matter? Will Desi’s stuffed sheep, standing sentry at cribside, complain if her jammies are facing east instead of west?

My husband often can’t be bothered with bibs, but the child gets fed.

Painting her room, he rolled a few strokes of the lavender hue on sideways, if you can believe it. At least it got covered, and once dry, it didn’t show.

He also watches entirely too much Discovery Health channel on cable — although I hear it’s leaving to make room for Oprah’s network — and is riveted by programs about children with horrible diseases or birth defects and the surgeries undertaken to help them.

“Why are you watching that?” I exclaim. It gives me the willies.

Sometimes, I conclude, I’m a shrew. So this week, as we approach Thanksgiving, I’m trying to cultivate an attitude of gratitude.

I’m grateful that I have a husband who not only loves me, but who loves our little “science experiment” more than he ever thought possible.

As I approach Desi’s first birthday, I am in awe of the whole pregnancy, birth and breast-feeding process. I’m grateful that my body cooperated with a minimum of rebellion. Liver spots on my formerly clear complexion, 15 still slowly retreating pounds of baby weight and two suspicious moles shaved off were a small price to pay for a glowing, healthy child.

I’m grateful that Desi loves me. That was one of my big fears going into all of this: What if I didn’t love her, and she didn’t love me? That was silly.

I’m grateful for my family, which somehow managed to keep me alive despite my adventures with canoes, bicycles, poisonous snakes, bee stings, snapping turtles and catfish.

It was nice of my folks to cultivate my sense of humor, too. I don’t think I could have made it through my first 11 months of motherhood without laughing at myself, and at my child.

I’m grateful to still have a job. Doing what I love. In journalism, no less, a field that is shrinking. If you like reading this column, having people act as watchdogs to keep government open and transparent, or if you’ve bought anything from the classified ads, help us out. Buy a newspaper.

But I digress.

In a culture where 16 percent of adults are uninsured, I’m thankful to have good health insurance, and people in our local Blue Cross office who go to bat for me when corporate unjustly rejects a claim.

I’m grateful for my reliable, safe vehicle, and for the understanding of my insurance company and my coworker, Dava, after I backed into her truck in the parking lot on an already stressful day.

Desi and I are both grateful for Lisa Schulte and Ginny Mahood, who care for Desi as if she were one of their own. And Grammy Sandy Edwards, who steps in whenever needed.

We’re grateful for those who gave us baby gifts this year, and those who gifted or sold us hand-me-downs. Margaret Gordon, 2-year-old Celia Ward and Ward-in-the-oven “Elko” were invaluable as friends and equipment loaners. I tried to return the favor by passing on our own surplus.

I’m thankful for the grace and goodness of friends and strangers as I lug around what sometimes seems like two tons of baby and gear. People open doors, literally and figuratively, for us. To name a few: Stroller-hauling Catherine Gwilliam, compassionate vaccine-giving nurse Mary Ness, tireless listener and special-order queen Brigid Rossolo of Teton Kids, baby-shower-hosting Ruth Ann Petroff.

Those of you who read these humble words on a regular basis make my day by stopping me in the coffee shop to tell me about your own experiences.

In short, I’m grateful to be a part of this community.

And I hope my attitude will last a little longer than Thursday.

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Features editor Johanna Love is grateful to be able to pontificate about parenthood every other week in this space.

Keeping keepsakes

2009-11-29T15:13:00.000-07:00

A few generations ago, people weren’t as mobile. They were “from” a place, and for the most part they stayed. Their stuff stayed. If they gave away treasured items, the recipient kept them.

Of course, those things were generally of high quality or homemade, and there weren’t a lot of them.

These days, many of us are involved in the Jackson Shuffle: moving once per year, or more, when housing situations dictate. So paring down possessions becomes important in a town where space is at a premium.

But what to save, what to toss, when it comes to baby’s things?

I’m a saver, married to a tosser. So although Scott isn’t physically getting rid of baby items himself, he encourages the practice.

Perhaps just one baby scrapbook would do the trick, I thought. That would be great, if I had time to scrapbook. So instead, I bought a hand-painted wooden box and am stashing memorabilia inside.

The box contains the predictable: baby shower invitation, photographs, birth announcement, newspaper announcement, ultrasound images, hospital bracelets.
It’s also a convenient place to file her immunization record, Social Security card and savings account register.

I bought photo stamps with Desi’s picture on them, so there’s a whole sheet of stamps in the box. To add to the nostalgia, postage has increased from the 42-cent rate I used to mail her birth announcements.

I also kept a “Name that Baby” poster-size sheet of paper from a poll taken at my baby shower. Desi can see that she could just as easily have been named Ruby, Myrtle, Twanda, Wookie or Lucille.

Former Teton Valley, Idaho, resident Jen Harrison Solis said she “can’t tolerate” having lots of clutter in her house.

“I don’t think Sully will regret not having every little thing he touched or used,” Solis said. “Unless something is really special, it’s just not worth the hassle to me.”

I’ve given away, donated or sold hundreds of baby items in Desi’s first year. Even gifts from family and friends that are no longer useful get passed on.

I find baby clothing more difficult to let go of. I’m not planning another child at this point, but some of her outfits are so adorable, and filled with memories of the days she wore them, I haven’t been able to give them away. So I fling them to the top of her closet. Soon I’ll need to dig through and properly store them.

Quilter Mary Lou Weidman gave me a great idea: Sew four or five items down to a background, strung along a piece of jute like they’re hanging on a clothesline. Make it into a quilt. That way you’ve saved the clothes and created a utilitarian object so they can be on display, not boxed in an attic. Other jumpers I’m also saving to use as quilt pieces.

My parents, bless their hearts – insert Southern joke about that phrase – did a fairly lousy job of documenting my childhood, and that of my sisters. There are no bronzed booties in their attics. When people ask me if Desi looks like my baby pictures, I have to say I don’t know.

I have only one set of photos of me and my sister, Edie. We were about 3 and 4, posing in dresses in front of some Olan Mills backdrops. There are no refrigerator-quality drawings socked away, but Edie has saved an oil painting from that same era. I brushed a vaguely SpongeBob SquarePants-looking dog, and Edie painted a taller, rectangular creature with huge yellow clawlike feet. It’s titled Bananatoes, and it brightens her hallway.

Bella’s mom, Trish Henning, says she’s already running out of space in the keepsake boxes she bought for her daughter.

“By the time Bella is grown and ready to move out on her own, I fear she may need a small U-Haul for everything I’ll collect over the years.”

Erika Wells Edmiston is keeping a baby book for Jack, largely because that’s what her parents did, although she isn’t sure he’ll want to keep it.

“I sort of feel like maybe a boy won’t really care, the way a girl might, later in life,” Edmiston said. “Who knows! Let him throw stuff out when he decides later on.”

I think that’s the best strategy. Keep as many things as you want to store. When your child is old enough to appreciate her keepsakes, and your hormones have cooled, then some things can be thrown away or donated.

My friend Elizabeth Mangum still has cute smocked dresses she wore as a baby. She dressed her baby doll in them as a child, then put them away and saved them for later.

Now, three decades hence, she’s using the clothes on a baby doll for her niece.

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Features editor Johanna Love hopes that she will find time to follow through on her quilting plans. Perhaps after life stops resembling a crazy quilt.

Desi's first Halloween

2009-11-15T22:50:00.002-07:00

OK, baby dressup fans... photo post. Desi was a Jackalope Fairy for her first Halloween.

Dressing up baby

2009-11-03T08:25:00.002-07:00

As I write this, I’m snuggled up in my happy place – in front of Desi’s closet.

My ingenious friend Elizabeth came to visit in July with the best baby present: a second clothes rod, suspended on starry purple ribbon, to hang below the top one in Desi’s closet. Now we can see more clothing selections at once. Cubbies – packed with bloomers, tights, bibs, hats, pajamas – line each side of the clothes rod, and tubs of too-big togs await on the floor.

You scoff. I say these things are vital for a well-dressed child.

Consider layering for 50-degree temperature swings, the volume of puffiness required for below-zero weather, pajamas, outerwear, hedging for growth spurts and outfitting for swim lessons, all within the constraints of a 2-by-5-foot closet.

Clinton and Stacy of “What Not To Wear” couldn’t work in these conditions.

At my baby shower a year ago, friends, family and coworkers started me on the path to baby adornment. We scored a polka-dot coming-home outfit, purple flowered dress, owl-toed Robeez soft leather shoes and a pair of petal-pink Moon Boots, among other things.

We’ve been gifted dozens of hand-me-downs that we’ve loved, worn a few times and re-gifted.

An aunt and great-aunt each sent an outfit in three sizes: newborn, 6 months and 12 months. Brilliant, since the girl pretty much wore “sleep sacks” for her first three months, and she stayed ensconced in a car seat sleeping bag whenever she was out of the house.

However, gifts of clothing, as much as they are appreciated, can be – ahem – taste-specific.

At Dina’s annual Oscar party, 2-month-old Desi wore the fanciest dress anyone had given her, a navy-and-green plaid number with velvet footed tights. Everyone else at the party was dressed to the nines, and my child resembled a Catholic schoolgirl.

Other outfits have been just as questionable. How do you explain to a beloved relative that a crocheted ecru lace tam and the creeper with faux-furry unicorn mane and butt ruffle aren’t your child’s style?

Because, really, baby’s style gets to be your style for the first year or more, and I’ve never worn a lace tam or a butt ruffle.
It’s a small window, though. I’ve been told that the child will not always succumb to your wardrobe wishes, so I’m getting my kicks while I can.

My photographer friend Katy, who polled her friends about Milo’s first shoes – Chuck Taylors or Vans? – just bought a neon-striped crocheted cap for her son. I’m sure he’s secure enough in his boyhood to rock the pink stripe. It’s funky, offbeat.

“I don’t even care that he doesn’t like hats and takes them off right away,” she said. “He will learn to love them, dammit.”

All summer, I scoured yard sales for stylish child clothing. Some of our favorites: orange Patagonia vest to wear for the Bronc homecoming, apple-green Puma tracksuit for lounging and airplanes, tiny Converse high-tops with a pink-and-orange Pokemon print, ladybug gardening clogs that likely won’t fit until late next summer.

I should confess, I never played much with Barbies. Boring. Only in the past decade have I embraced the color pink and developed some sense of style. And having a living, giggling dress-up doll is too good an opportunity to pass up.

While visiting family last week, I hit Target and the outlet malls to fill in the gaps in Desi’s winter wardrobe. She needed tights in several colors, cardigans in brown and black, a lime-green bolero, a couple of corduroy dresses and a handful of long-sleeved T-shirts from the clearance rack.

Although she’s 10 months old, the smallest thing I bought her was to fit 18 months. It seems like throwing your money away to buy something that will only fit for a month or two.

Desi has six pairs of shoes that fit her right now. Cowgirl boots, hiking boots, fleecy slipper boots, sneakers, mary janes and Robeez. One was a hand-me-down, two were gifts, two pair I bought new and one came from a yard sale. Guess how many of them stay on her feet. Just the Robeez. The rest are cute, but she can Houdini out of them in two minutes flat if you don’t cinch them down.

Sure, Desi has days she doesn’t get out of her pajamas, when I’m too harried and under deadline to bother. But any excuse to go out warrants a full wardrobe change.

My husband surprised me on Friday by asking if we could go out to dinner after work. Sure, I said. But you and I have to bathe and change, and we’ve got to get the baby dressed.

“Why can’t she just wear that?” he asked, pointing to Desi’s grubby blue “Whoo’s the Cutest?” owl T-shirt and the dog-hair-accented fleece pants she had been mopping the floor with for hours.

“Because she can’t.”

“Why not?”

Enough already. I threw out the totalitarianism. “Because I said so.”

I did resist buying her an event-specific Halloween costume this year. We’ve got plenty of creative outfit elements to choose from.
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Features editor Johanna Love is going through her own wardrobe this week, tossing some items, hanging onto others. But it’s not nearly as much fun as going through baby clothes.

Sugar sugar

2009-10-23T16:16:00.003-06:00

Ugh.

While moping about the World Wide Web because of a self-imposed sugar moratorium, I came upon this.

We eat 200 POUNDS of sugar a year? That's hard to fathom. That's more than a half-pound a day. That can't be right. But I did eat about half a pound of sugar, it seemed like, on Monday. That was the day that Edie and I drove down to see our dad. Family angst and drama compounded my sweet tooth, and over a 12-hour period I had a blueberry muffin, TWO squares of chess pie and most of a bottle of red wine.

No wonder I busted out with a skin condition that Scott terms "jungle rot."

No sugar, no flour.

For the foreseeable future.

Baby, what are you thinking?

2009-10-14T15:18:00.005-06:00

Dear baby,

As you approach 10 months old, I think it’s time to discuss communication. I’m trying really hard to be clear with you. It’s only fair that you hurry up and tell me what’s going on in that head of yours.

I realize that some people learn and teach their babies sign language. Are these folks unemployed? I can’t possibly find the time and energy to learn a whole new language for your convenience just because you won’t be chatting for another year.

Anybody can look at you and tell that you’re usually a happy girl. It’s why you’re so popular. That smile of yours can light up a room, and your squeal draws baby-gazers like flies to a teething biscuit.

I can pretty easily discern when you’re hungry, sleepy, bored, pooping or in a cranky mood.

You’re delighted by music. You bop and jig to the beat, dancing better than that Baby Cory kid, except that you can’t quite stand up to do the stanky leg shake.

It’s obvious that you’re fascinated by sensory experiences of all kinds. You like splashing in the tub, chewing on a spoon, petting Buster Mahood (who likes babies way more than our dog Mojo), tasting a new food, looking at architecture on your 497th stroller lap around the neighborhood.

Your listening skills are excellent. If somebody talks while you’re trying to eat, you pop off the boobie and pay attention. So I have to be a little bit of a Shushing Nursing Nazi.

The crawling thing frustrates you, I can tell. Your daddy says you’ve only got one gear at this point: reverse.

As Patrick Swayze said in Dirty Dancing, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.” Well, except for baby. I turn around and there you are with nowhere to go, backed into the cabinets, body straining into a plank, pushing backward against the wall.

You growl and complain and grunt and cry because crawling is so hard and you just can’t figure out how to use your knees. I comfort you verbally and restrain myself from coming to scoop you up and cover you with kisses.

I try to just let you figure it out, because that’s what life’s about. I can’t always be rescuing you and fixing your problems for you. I don’t want you calling me at 2 a.m. from your college dorm room and asking what to do about your roommate’s boyfriend’s snoring problem. You’ve gotta develop some coping skills.

Crawling is tough. That’s just the way it is. But once you get the hang of it, I’m sure you’re going to be great, and it’ll be so much fun. It’ll probably be even sweeter because you taught yourself, with no fancypants crawling instructor or older babies to show you how.

I know other babies your age are crawling, even cruising around on furniture, probably holding their own sippy cup and pointing to Uzbekistan on the globe. Forget about them. You can’t compare yourself to other babies all the time. That’s a recipe for crazymaking.

Sometimes you surprise us with your vocalizations, funny faces or actions, and we laugh at you. This encourages you to repeat the behavior, like the fake cough that Grammy taught you. You’re such a ham.

I guess it’s getting better than it was when you were a baby and I couldn’t tell one cry from another. Still, sometimes I just don’t what you’re trying to say. It’s hard to reason with someone who doesn’t hold up her end of the debate.

You did convey your dissatisfaction with me when you pitched your first fit last week. That was one for the books. Except that I’ve had zero time to write in your baby book, and that’s one more thing I feel bad about, thank you very much.

Anyway, about the fit. You remember. I let you be the Shopping Assistant and carry the list, but you couldn’t just hold it and read it, you had to eat it. So when I saw a chunk missing from the Post-It note, I fished the spitball out of your mouth and took the list away.

You freaked out. You gulped in air and screamed. Huge crocodile tears flooded your face. People stared.

Your vigor impressed me. Your daddy says he would have given you the paper back to shut you up and avoid a public meltdown. As family therapist Laura Santomauro says, your daddy and I are going to have to work on meshing our parenting styles.

If I were Perfect Mommy, I’d have had a suitable toy in my pocket to substitute for the list, possibly preempting the fit. “I need this list back, but here, have a silicone spatula to chew!”

I’m not Perfect Mommy at all, but I’m the only Mommy you have, and I’m trying really hard to be good at it.

So if you could just help me out by working on your communication skills, that would be great. Sometimes I feel like Jay, exhausted by Silent Bob’s charades in Kevin Smith’s movies. “Just say it already!”

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This column originally appeared in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. Don't delay, subscribe today, so Jo keeps a job!

Knit an iHoodie. You know you want to.

2009-10-13T13:40:00.003-06:00

Five years ago, I designed a knitting pattern for a wee hoodie sweater to knit for your iPod. These days, the iPod is miniscule, but the iPhone is the same size, roughly, as the old iPod.
What is old, made new. Buy a pattern today! ((My first foray onto Etsy, too.)) Baby needs new shoes!

Need invitations? Stationery? Design help?

2009-10-13T10:47:00.003-06:00

My coworkers and friends Cara and Jenny are launching a new biz. Check out their Web site.

Cara's wedding invitations, the first venture between the two, were the most gorgeous and inventive I've ever seen.

Please consider them if you need any paper goodies. I mean, social media and blogs and whatnot are cool and all, but there's nothing more touching than a personal, handwritten envelope in your box, along with all the bills.

Sew ... another hobby

2009-10-08T21:49:00.002-06:00

I often get intrigued when I interview someone about a story. Sometimes I get so pumped, I do something crazy.

Two weeks ago, I wrote a preview of Quilting in the Tetons. Teton County Extension Agent Mary Martin riled me up by talking about the history of quilting. At one time, sewing was the only freedom of expression some women had. And messages were hidden in quilts, clues for black people trying to follow the Underground Railroad and make it to the North and freedom. Quilts are utilitarian. Heirlooms. All those things appealed to me so much.

So I signed up for Mary Lou Weidman's class Flower Power. She does a "Hoochy Mama" method of piecing that was advertised as fun, easy, colorful, artistic. So me. So I signed up. Now for a machine ... my friend Bru said she had one she would loan me. I showed up on Tuesday night to pick it up. When she uncovered it, I was taken aback. Black steel. Heavy as a 50-pound bar in the gym. It looked too old to work. She made me thread it and sew a seam. Although I hadn't really sewn since I was a kid – 25 years ago? – it came back to me easily.

Oh, the fabric! Oh, the colors! The possibilities are endless. Bottom line, I loved the class. See the funky flowers, flowerpot and bird I made? Read all about it in the award-winning Valley section of the News&Guide on Wednesday, Oct. 14. Of course I haven't written the story yet. It's all done except for the writing. I've done my interviews, participated in the class, typed in my chickenscratch notes.

I wanted so badly to keep going, to stay in that little basement for days and whip out more flowers. But I had to give the borrowed machine back, which made my heart ache like someone was jabbing it with a needle. I wanted my own machine. The only lady in town who sells them sells Bernina, the Porsche of sewing machines. Entry-level ones start at $750. Forget about buying a cheapie, the ladies in class said. You'll be throwing your money away. You've got to spend $800 to get one that's not plastic crap.

I was crestfallen. A new hobby, too expensive to pursue.

As you can tell by my vintage Airstream, I value 40-year-old technology. So I cruised eBay tonight, and it was love at first sight with a 3/4 size green machine. So I jumped in with both feet, just like with the Airstream purchase three and a half years ago.

I just bought a vintage Singer 185k sewing machine, like the one up in the top photo. It's from eBay, coming from a lady in Meridian, Mississippi who just closed a sewing shop, so she knows her business. Many, many folks on the World Wide Web say that this machine sews straight as an arrow, a dependable, powerful little workhorse. Here's one description:

The Singer Model 185 is a light to mid-duty dressmaker and general purpose machine and is powered with a foot control. This pretty gal has a shorter bed than the larger models and features straight lock stitch with forward and reverse belt driven gears and the same engine size as the larger machines.

Her factory features include a built-in bobbin winder, a focused intense work light with a lens, and a built in thread cutter.

She'll stitch through light leathers, denim, canvas like butter and all the similar materials as well. She'll carry all size needles between a size 9 to a size 21.

For about the same price as a horrible plastic gear modern sewing machines that will spend half it's life in the repair shop, you can have this lovely easy-care all metal treasure instead.

Use it for a lifetime and pass it on to your grandkids. They don't make 'em like this any more.

I paid $50, plus $50 shipping, $100 total. The cheapest Singer for sale today (in Idaho Falls, two hours away, eight gallons of gas = $20) costs $149 plus tax. That's at least $180.

And the best part? I'm having it shipped to my sister's house in Memphis. My mama will meet us up there, and she can show me how to use it. Just like she did on her Singer when I was 9.

Leaving baby in car: Best for you, or her?

2009-09-29T08:40:00.002-06:00

Wyoming has the fewest people of any state in the union. Seems like it also has the fewest laws. State Rep. Keith Gingery, chair of the legislature's judiciary committee, didn't know for sure, but said "that may actually be true."

"Many states use a specificity type of criminal code (meaning a crime for every conceivable violation), Wyoming uses a general approach, where more general statutes are created that encompass a myriad of crimes within."

Having fewer laws is fine by me. I think of Wyoming residents as self-reliant, independent and mostly with enough common sense to not need a bunch of legislation micromanaging their every move.

Don’t like what your neighbor is doing? Don’t watch. It’s a big state, just move along. Nothing to see here.

With that said, I have gotten perhaps a bit too comfortable leaving my child alone inside the car.

Before you dial 911, let me explain.

I’m a trusting person. I routinely leave keys in the vehicle, house unlocked, purse on a chair in the coffee shop. Add that naivete to the setting. Jackson is a tranquil town where people know one another and most crimes are related to belligerent drunks or kids stealing CDs.

When Desi was an infant, cuddled in her car seat, I always hauled her out of the truck and with me into every establishment.

When she was 8 weeks old, Desi and I waltzed into a saloon in Carefree, Ariz., because it was the only place to eat dinner that weeknight at the resort where we were staying. While there, I sang karaoke with her snoozing in a sling. I had no problem bringing my baby into a smoke-free bar.

But when best friend Melanie Harrice went out to dinner with us the next night, she asked if we should just leave sleeping Desi in the car, with it running, as we ate a leisurely meal. “Like Hazard,” her poodle, she said. I laughed so hard that I couldn’t answer her as I grabbed the car seat.

But now that Desi has graduated to a fixed toddler car seat, it’s hard not to wake the 23-pound monster when dragging her in and out. Thank goodness for the Mug Shot, a drive-through coffee shack.

On Saturdays, Desi and I have a yard sale habit. Often I just drive by if nothing looks appealing. When I do stop, I pull Desi out with me to peruse baby clothes, toys and her latest obsession, wooden spoons. I have, on occasion, made her a play mat out of the seller’s blanket, pie pans and spoons.

After an hour of browsing, or a cross-town drive, she usually nods off. So I breach yard-sale etiquette of street parking and bust up into the seller’s driveway, a few yards away from the sale. I crack both windows, lock the door and pop out to shop.
I can’t imagine doing it a different way. Interrupt her sleep each time? Mean. Or am I just being self-centered by not wanting a cranky baby?

Twice in the past month, I’ve questioned my judgment after leaving her in the car.
The first time, I left her locked in the truck outside the liquor store for three minutes as I ran inside. As I emerged with a case of PBR for a friend’s wedding photo session, Desi was crying and several passers-by were talking on their cell phones. Were they calling the police?

The next time, Desi was asleep as we drove to Schwabacher’s Landing in Grand Teton National Park for her first modeling gig. I left her with the door open as I hauled her props and wardrobe a few yards down the trail. But the photo crew was farther down than I thought. Out of sight of the truck, still no set. What seemed like a quarter-mile away, I saw a local artist and asked his help replacing the lid on the clothing tub. A grandfather himself, he was alarmed when I told him the baby was in the car and told me “they’ll throw you in jail.”

Even more anxious, I hustled down the trail a few more yards, dumped my load and hightailed it for the car. I ran in my flip-flops. When I got there, Desi was awake and fine, but I was about to hyperventilate.

Police Chief Todd Smith says that all parents are probably “guilty of having used poor judgment at one time or another,” but in Wyoming, there’s not a specific statute that prohibits leaving a child unattended in the car.

“But there are obviously laws that cover child endangerment,” Smith said. Parents should always consider temperature inside the car and out, he said, and the age of the child. He suggests infants never be left alone in a vehicle, but “as the child gets older and conditions warrant, it’s obviously not a crime to do that.”

On a regular basis, Jackson Hole law enforcement officers get called by parents who accidentally locked their child in a car.

Enter the hide-a-key, I say.

Smith cautions parents not to be lulled into a false sense of security because they live in a rural area.

“Your ZIP code doesn’t dictate the safety of your child,” Smith said. “Parents should take all precautions to keep your children safe, not just from the weather, but from someone who may want to harm your child.”

Want to worry yourself sick? Just Google “kid alone car” or some such phrase.

According to Jannette Fennel at www.kidsandcars.org, people “leave children alone in automobiles every day for a variety of reasons, but primarily because they are unaware of the dangers associated with leaving them alone.”

Children have died from electrical fires, strangling on their car seats, in power windows, poisoned by carbon monoxide, by playing with a loaded gun that you just happened to have in the car. Children have been stolen. The car they’re sitting in has been stolen. Children throw the car into gear and careen into other people, killing them.

According to Harrisonshope.org, 15 states have laws prohibiting leaving children alone in motor vehicles; nine more have legislation proposed. Wyoming isn’t one.

So should you leave your child alone in a car? That’s up to you.

From conception, I’ve made carefully reasoned decisions about my child that alarmists insist are not OK. I sat in the hot tub (while guzzling ice water). I drank a glass of wine on several special occasions. We’ve always covered her with a blanket at night (suffocation! SIDS! Arrest me now!).

I figure you should treat your child at least as carefully as your wallet – pretend there’s lots of cash in it. You wouldn’t leave your wallet sitting in the seat of your unlocked car while you had dinner with friends, or on Town Square while you try on shoes.

But if you’re going to leave your child in the car, perhaps rip that cute “Baby on Board” sign out of your rear window. No sense incriminating yourself.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
A version of this column was published in the Jackson Hole News&Guide, Sept. 30, 2009

Desi at her first wedding

2009-09-20T18:54:00.002-06:00

Right after I snapped this shot, Desi somersaulted forward off the Airstream couch. I dropped my new G10 (ack!), caught her and fell myself. But the image and the camera survived, and I've just got an achy knee. Sometimes I wonder if I'm too old for all this business...

I'm sorry, I have no time to read your ______

2009-09-15T09:41:00.002-06:00

Though this puts it a bit more harshly, it's a backlash against those who ask writers to read their work.

I'm sure that doctors avoid elevators like the plague. "Can I show you my rash?"

Desi does Vegas

2009-09-08T00:25:00.002-06:00

A friend's bachelorette party was the perfect excuse for a girls' weekend to Las Vegas.

Desi took Mommy and Grammy along for the ride.

Here our little diva is eating peas at Denny's on the strip, checking out the pool at Wynn Hotel and wearing her special Vegas costume near the blackjack tables. Unfortuately Mommy forgot to reset the camera after a friend played with the special effects.

C'mon little sucker, into the other room

2009-08-31T15:51:00.002-06:00

On a quiet Sunday shift not long ago, a copy editor walked into the newsroom to the sound of righteous girl rock.

“Is that music coming from your computer?”

“No, it’s my iPhone.”

“Well can you turn it off?”

“Nope, sorry. It’s cleverly disguising the sound of my breast pump.”

The copy editor turned three shades of red and beat a retreat back to his side of the office partition. Over his shoulder, a parting shot: “Well, can you change the song?”

Sure. I get it, he doesn’t care for Pink. I put on some soothing Brahms the next time.

For working mothers who breast-feed, pumping is a somewhat unpleasant necessity, like mucking out a horse stall. You’ve got to do it on a regular basis, or stuff piles up.

Midday and midafternoon most workdays, I tromp over to the sunny corner conference room. It’s pleasant, if a bit warm. But it’s not always available, so I occasionally resort to borrowing the publisher’s office, or the associate publisher’s office. I stick a “Moo” note on the door to ensure privacy.

My last resort for a pumping locale is the bathroom. Except the throne, there’s no place to sit and I worry (justified or not) about my milk being contaminated via germs rendered aerosol by the flushing toilet.

On Sundays, I’m almost always frantically scrambling to write and edit fast enough for the layout artist to keep busy, so taking a 15-minute pumping break doesn’t always seem like an option. With just a skeleton crew in the office, my desk feels private enough to attach cones under my shirt and keep typing. The only thing that must be mitigated is the “whoosh-a-whoosh-a” sound. Hence the tunes.

St. John’s Medical Center lactation consultant Janet Wood said pumping at least every three to four hours is vital for most breast-feeding women who are separated from their baby during the workday.

“If you skip those feedings [or pumping sessions], your brain isn’t getting the message to continue producing the milk,” Wood said. “Your prolactin levels drop, and that can be catastrophic to moms’ supply.”

Going hours without pumping also can cause painful health problems: engorgement, mastitis, plugged ducts. All about as fun as a root canal.

Some of you may not understand how the process works. You attach hoses to precisely engineered cones that are screwed onto bottles. Plug in the contraption, center each cone just so on a nipple, press a button and the sucker begins to work. Despite the extensive research and development conducted in the past couple decades – I saw a photo of a not-so-long-ago device that resembled an a-oo-gah horn from the Model T Ford – the sensation will feel absolutely nothing like a baby suckling. It’s more like a Shop-Vac.

Nature really is incredible. A baby can empty your breast in 5 minutes flat with a minimum of discomfort. It’s even sort of relaxing, once you get used to it. The SuperDuper WhizzPro Dual Slurper 8000 (I hereby copyright that name) takes three times as long and can leave you with hooter hickeys.

Then there’s the issue of how to occupy yourself. I once tried to stretch my office-weary body with yoga poses, but the pump attachment parts proved leaky. So I try to multitask with work: I scan national news, proofread stories, make phone calls. The phone issue is sticky. Without a hands-free pumping setup, I have to use speakerphone, and then the other party is privy to that lovely whoosh-a sound.

After you’ve coaxed enough moo juice and deposited it into cute freezer bags labeled “My Mommy’s Milk” in a purple Kidprint font, it’s time to deposit the liquid gold alongside Hot Pockets and Otter Pops in the office freezer. Then make sure nobody needs the sink for three minutes while you hand wash and dry eight separate parts. Female co-workers usually keep the greetings light; men who wander in on this scene don’t seem to know what to say, so there’s a weird silence.

My ideal pumping setup, if anyone plans to design an office sometime soon, would include a comfortable chair, TV-tray-type desk, nearby electric outlets and a sink for rinsing parts. Don’t forget the teeny fridge to avoid the “Uh-oh, that wasn’t coffee creamer, was it?” scenario.

One of my friends quit breast-feeding because there wasn’t a good place at work to pump, so her supply dried up. And she’s a manager.

In Wyoming, there’s no law requiring employers to provide their employees with time or place to pump. Republican Rep. Kathy Davison, of District 20, proposed a great bill in 2007 that, in part, required companies to provide breaks, areas to pump and store milk.

On the telephone from Kemmerer with her grandson babbling in the background, Davison said pressure from business owners made legislators water the bill down in committee so only one thing became law: a woman breast-feeding an “infant child,” any place she may legally be, can’t be charged with public indecency.

“I think if a woman wants to breast-feed, they should have that ability, no matter where they work,” Davison said. “Certainly, I think every business should accommodate them on that point.”

And if she’s still in office for the Wyoming Legislature’s general session in 2011, she may try again.

Mommies or lactivists, contact your elected officials.

If you need support sooner, Wood says she would be happy to set up meetings for breast-feeding mothers to chat. Just e-mail her at lactation@tetonhospital.org.

Excuse me for a moment. I need to visit the conference room. Call my cell if you need me, and if you don’t mind being on speakerphone.

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Features editor Johanna Love is grateful that her News&Guide teammates have accommodated her lactation schedule, and that nobody has confused her moo juice with creamer. Every two weeks, she writes about her experiences as a new mother.

Bighorn gets new home

2009-08-25T09:55:00.002-06:00

Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources
August 25, 2009
Contact: Darrel Trembly, 307-332-6333
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“Bam Bam” has a new home.
“Bam Bam” the Sinks Canyon State Park Bighorn Sheep ram, who has gained local and internet fame in recent months, was moved to a new home in the Wind River Mountains, far away from roads and, hopefully, people.
The ram had become something of a celebrity because he was so tame. Visitors from around the world saw the animal up close and personal, usually a rarity with Bighorn Sheep. The ram even starred in a “YouTube” video charging a truck.
One of the last surviving animals from the Sinks Canyon herd, the sheep had become habituated to people over the years. People petting and feeding the animal didn’t help and Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Sinks Canyon State Park staff attempts to get him to stay away from roads and other populated areas didn’t work.
“He is still a wild animal and had become more aggressive as the summer went on,” Hot Springs State Park Superintendent Darrel Trembly said. “He had started chasing people, cornering them against fences and butting vehicles. It was only a matter of time before someone got hurt or he got hit by a vehicle.”
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department lured him into a trailer early in the morning last week and then transported him to his new home.
“It went as smoothly as any transplant could,” said Kent Schmidlin of the Wyoming Game and Fish Lander Region Office. “Now hopefully he can be with other wild sheep and live like he is supposed to.”

Desi got fired. Whoopee!

2009-08-17T13:36:00.002-06:00

Four weeks ago, a day-care staff member called me at work at 11 a.m. “We need you to come get Desi,” she said. “She’s been crying for two straight hours, and we can’t do anything with her.”

What? I was horrified. Two hours?

I rushed there and found her slumped in a high chair, face blotchy and tear-streaked, finally cried out. I woke her up, cuddled her. She was fine. I surmised that it was Scott’s fault for dropping her off that morning while she slept in her car seat.

Not that simple, apparently. Each week, the report from Desi’s single day of day care was grim. “She had a rough day.” “She wouldn’t nap.” “She’s crying a lot, and it’s putting the other children on edge.” It just didn’t sound like our happy girl.

Day-care staff members had determined that Desi was having a hard time adapting to the routine just one day per week. She had trouble adjusting between getting one-on-one attention and sharing the adults in her life.

Then last week, an ultimatum: Either Desi attended day care full time (four days per week) or not at all.

She was getting fired, pretty much.

I felt trapped. Three days per week, we have an awesome nanny, Lisa Schulte, who dotes on Desi like her own grandchildren. Could we cut her back to one day per week? That wouldn’t be fair to Lisa or Desi.

To day care or not to day care, that was the question.

But why was this just happening now? From 5 to 7 months of age, Desi seemed to be fine with day care.

I consulted the books. As News&Guide photographer Price Chambers said once about following a book’s parenting advice: “It’s a fairly thick book.”

Part of the problem is developmental. At about 7 months of age, separation anxiety begins.

“She’ll know you’re somewhere,” write the authors of The American Academy of Pediatrics’ baby care guide, “but not with her, and this will cause her great distress. She’ll have so little sense of time that she won’t know when – or even whether – you’ll be coming back.”

I called on marriage and family therapist Laura Santomauro, who agreed that separation anxiety is “totally developmental,” and that having six days between day care days probably adds to the problem.

“One week in the life of a child is a really long time,” Santomauro said. “It’s not that she can’t adjust. It’s how much can you tolerate in watching your child have some discomfort?”

Regardless of our decision, Santomauro said Desi would likely be resilient enough to thrive.

“I think we sometimes overthink these things,” she said. “At the end of the day, there are kids who have much worse situations and end up adjusting fine.”

Pediatrician Ruth Ann Tomlinson said she went through the same thing with her daughter. “She has a hard time adjusting to new situations, too,” Tomlinson said. She also said that either solution would likely be fine in the long run: full-time day care or full-time nanny (adding play dates for socialization).

Certainly, we want Desi to be happy. Sobbing every day isn’t normal, baby or grown-up.

But do we really want to have our child get less one-on-one attention because she was having trouble adjusting? Is 8 months old enough to “toughen up” and learn to share attention with other kids?

This was part of my angst about whether it was OK to have an only child. Would she be spoiled? Would it always be “all about Desi”? Would she never learn to share or have normal relationships? Would she grow up to be the neurotic cat lady?

I called a neighbor who at one point had offered to watch Desi as needed. Come September, her four daughters will be in school or preschool, and she was willing to try watching Desi one day per week, plus a couple of hours on a Friday, perhaps.

Desi and I hung out with the family Friday, and the girls all had a great time. I’m cautiously optimistic.

It’s hard for me to believe that Desi has been fired. I was 22 before my “attitude problem” (read: refusal to kowtow to patronizing restaurant manager) got me sacked.

A friend whose son is particularly energetic said she was so worried about him getting fired from day care that she dosed his applesauce with Calm Child herbal extract for the 3-year-old’s first week there. It worked; he was unusually tranquil.

Dr. Miriam Stoppard, in her The New Babycare Book, says that “in a way, the better parent you are, the more your toddler is likely to cry when separated from you.”

Well, at least someone thinks I’m doing a good job.

Buy a newspaper... please?

2009-08-10T12:56:00.001-06:00

This got sent to me today by our chief photographer.

I have no idea of the history behind it, and, as is typical, I'm on deadline with stuff that I'm actually getting paid to write / edit, so I can't research this for you and find out who produced it.

But I join in the plea: BUY NEWSPAPERS!

A tisket a tasket, a baby in a basket... or sling, etc.

2009-08-03T16:27:00.004-06:00

Between the OB department and the vehicle, the infant car seat seems light as an Easter basket to Dad, who swells with pride. Mom stretches her bed-cramped legs and totters to the car, unencumbered by about 15 pounds of weight she walked in with.

A few days later, roughly a week after the birth, the mother’s adrenaline rush comes to a screeching halt. Monotony sets in. Eat, sleep, cry, pee, poo, repeat. Oh, and the baby does all that stuff, too. The babymoon is over.

When mama emerges from her cocoon, baby must come with.

Enter the car seat limp.

This peculiar gait is unmistakable: a shuffle-step with the leg closest to the unwieldy object, and a longer step with the other leg. The victim, er, mother, displays radically sloped shoulders and a desperate look.

The car seat is desirable as a mode of transport for many reasons. Often the infant is lulled to sleep in the vehicle, and the Never Wake a Sleeping Baby rule is in effect for at least the first six months of its life.

Even if the child is awake, the seat is a happy place, a second womb. It’s a self-contained pod: chair, bed, activity center, rocker, shaded with a canopy. In winter, most Wyoming car seats are covered with a Bundleme sleeping-bag-like contraption. Toys dangle from the handle like bait on a trotline for your little angelfish.

As babies gain weight quickly – an ounce a day in what computer geek Colleen Thompson calls the “larval stage” – dragging the infant seat around soon becomes a backbreaking proposition.

Studies also have shown that babies who are touched and handled and held are healthier, even smarter. Dr. William Sears leads an army of “babywearers” who swear their children cry less.

Well, why didn’t you say so? Sleep-deprived folks like instant gratification. Bring on the baby-toting apparatuses.

My sister gave me a ring sling. I had trouble adjusting it to be comfortable on my shoulder, and years of office work and heavy messenger bags already have doomed my back to stress knots. But I used it daily when Desi was tiny, and it still functions as a spare.

I tried a Hotsling because of its idiot-proof design: a strip of fabric sewn into a circle. It worked well to keep my baby snuggled in a cradled position. Swaddled inside it, Desi slept or cooed through an hourlong magazine editing meeting, cementing her reputation as the best baby in the valley.

The Baby Bjorn front-carrier kept Desi happy and secure as I exercised, shopped and did chores. Its padded neck collar was invaluable for her first few floppy-head months. Then she doubled her birth weight, and the extra load on my shoulders and back made me feel pregnant again.

For Mother’s Day, I bought myself an Ergo soft baby carrier, which can be worn on front, back or hip. The hip belt helps take weight off my shoulders, and even strangers remark on the pretty, embroidered fabric. It’s my go-to gadget for the grocery store.

Carolyn Smith Fernald, a former Jackson resident who now lives in Maine, loves Ergo carriers so much, she bought two. Well, she sort of needs two, to carry twins Fisher and Nell. She straps one to the back and the other to the front. For those of us struggling with one baby, it’s hard to fathom.

As hiking weather approached, I realized that what makes the Ergo great – keeping baby close – isn’t pleasant while sweating. I bought a Sherpani Rumba backpack that keeps Desi suspended in her own seat above a sizeable storage compartment. We can walk around the neighborhood, up Snow King, to the farmers market, to the softball field.

We could even go backpacking, if I were younger, fitter and certifiably insane.

A detachable roof provides shade and the optional Velcro-on waterproof windows. Although it has four or five adjustment points, I don’t think we’ve gotten the backpack fit quite dialed in.

Desi would disagree; her seat provides the perfect perch to direct her mount by tugging on ponytail reins. Yah, horsey!

Babywearing is fun, but occasionally I yearn to remember what life was like without carrying a child, so I turn to wheels.

The BOB (Beast of Burden) stroller is to parents what a Camelbak is to hikers. Just looking at it makes me happy: go-anywhere pneumatic tires, large cargo bay, huge sunshade, one-finger maneuverability and the optional cupholder accessory. Genius. No wonder it’s the official stroller of Stroller Strides. Julie Linahan runs a local chapter of the suburban fitmom cult.

And my favorite mode of baby transport? The Chariot bicycle Sidecarrier. I pop it onto my grocery-getter (an old mountain bike outfitted with trunk bag/panniers) and off we go. I can look down to check on her more easily than if she were riding behind me, and I’m not kicking dust in her face. Desi once rode in it for two and a half hours without complaining. It corners easily and doesn’t affect the bike’s handling.

Pro tip: Don’t try to ride off a curb with the Sidecarrier attached. The low-mounted hitch neatly stops your whole rig, resulting in a spectacular endo. As you freak out, baby will look askance at you: “Why’d we stop?”

Once you get used to the baby-toting devices, they’re hard to do without.

As I packed for a weekend softball tournament trip on Friday, Scott watched me load stroller, sidecar, backpack, Ergo, etc., into the truck before exhaling an exasperated “Seriously? Do you need to pack the whole house?”

Actually, yes. I’m pretty determined to carry on with life, carrying baby with me. And if it takes a few pieces of gear, so be it.
––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––-----------------------
Johanna writes about her experiences as a new mother in the Jackson Hole News&Guide every other week. She’s on a roll now but is terrified of two looming developments: crawling and teeth.

Before and after ...

2009-07-28T18:54:00.002-06:00

I started out my first draft of last week's column a little pissy because of anonymous advertisers' comments. So for your enjoyment, here are the snarky first draft and then the published version.

Offense is the best defense ...

It has come to my attention that some people were offended by a phrase in my last column. I said that my husband and I “took out the goalie,” referring to stopping contraception use.

In deference to them, I will not repeat the words “taking out the goalie” again. Just to be clear, it wasn’t a literal thing. There was no little teeny goalie to remove. So here’s a short history of the contraception route we took to prevent parenthood until we were ready.

Obviously, I went through a condom phase. Everyone should. They’re handy devices that often prevent the spread of disease, and are reasonably effective at corralling man-juice. Even had a boyfriend who “doubled up,” then disappeared into the bathroom afterward to test them and make sure they didn’t break.

I was on the pill for about 15 years. When I first began taking it in college, my debilitating heavy periods eased considerably. So, whether I was in a relationship or a dry spell, I stayed on the pill.

Thanks to my enlightened Jackson gynecologists, Dr. Tom Smith, and later, Dr. Annie Fenn, I took the pill continuously for several months, having a period only every few months. There’s now a pill marketed for that purpose, Seasonique.

After a while, my tree-hugging sister voiced her worries about all the hormones I was ingesting. I touted the pill’s benefits in protecting me against endometriosis, ovarian cysts, etc. Not to mention protecting me against babies, which I wasn’t prepared for, I reminded my sister, who at my last count had four children. Traveling to Memphis to watch her try to manage the four-ring circus was a dose of birth control in itself.

Still, I began to wonder whether all those hormones were good for me, so I tried the NuvaRing, a nifty device that delivered a smaller dose of hormones directly to the baby-delivering zone. My hubby decided that he wasn’t a fan of the ringy dingy thingy after it escaped one too many times. Finding it in the sheets later was a buzz kill.

Back to the pill.

I had a few minor “baby pains” back in 2001. These are a faint desire to be maternal, tempered by reality like debt, emotional immaturity and the living situation of an indentured servant. So we acquired another birth control item: a puppy.

Mojo did child-like things. He needed consistent attention, peed on the floor so many times we considered diapers, entertained us with his antics and cost a few hundred dollars in shots and minor surgeries for a deeply cut paw and a growth on his ear. Good parenting training, if you ask me.

Around this time, several celebrities began mysteriously getting pregnant, ostensibly accidentally. A few of them are still with the Baby Daddy. “With all the technology available,” I sputtered to anyone who would listen, “how in the world are they still going ‘Oops!’”

A few things I never tried. The sponge? Ewww. The diaphragm? So 1970s. The shot? I hate needles, and the unpredictable periods it can cause scared away my inner control freak. Norplant? Way too alien-implant for me. The Mirena IUD seems great. I made an appointment for it once, but it’s pretty expensive to insert; it takes about two years for it to be cost-effective.

When it was close to decision time on the procreation front, I stopped taking the pill and started taking prenatal vitamins. We used the “pull and pray” method, as my Catholic friend calls it.

When you’re pregnant, obviously you can’t get pregnant again, so no birth control was necessary. After birth, breastfeeding does suppress ovulation (lactational amenorrhea method), given that the infant is suckling on demand.

My friend Katy resumed taking the pill, as advised by her gynecologist, when her son was about two months old. She said it seemed to cut her breastmilk supply in half, and then when she stopped taking it, her period returned. Not fun either way.

Once the baby’s six months old, or sleeping through the night, or your period returns, another method of birth control is advised. That is, if you and your partner ever have time or energy for sex, given the demands of a baby.

Here we go again.

REWRITTEN

What’s the one scenario potentially more exhausting than having twin infants? Getting pregnant again shortly after giving birth and having kids about a year apart.

Last fall, Christy, the wife of one of my hubby’s softball buddies, was nursing her 7-month-old child and unexpectedly got pregnant with her second. She and her husband “were not really paying much attention,” she said. In the back of her mind, she knew that she wasn’t using a birth control method and that another pregnancy was possible.

“Definitely do not rely on breastfeeding” as a method of birth control, is Christy’s advice to new moms.

Breastfeeding does suppress ovulation, but only to a point, according to Miriam Labbok, who wrote a paper in 1993 about the “lactational amenorrhea method” – read: breastfeeding – of family planning. She writes that your chance of pregnancy is less than 2 percent (comparable to the pill) if the infant is less than six months old, if your period has not returned and if you’re breastfeeding full-time, or nearly full-time. Clinical trials have proven such.

Once baby’s six months old, or sleeping through the night, or your period returns, another method of birth control is advised.
But as LAM is a natural, human method of birth control, it’s subject to pilot error. If you left your infant for a couple days, or let her sleep through the night without waking her up to eat, for instance, you could ovulate. That’s without getting a “warning period.”

My friend Katy began using the NuvaRing, as advised by her gynecologist, when her son was about 2 months old. She said the device, which slowly delivers hormones to the baby-delivering area, seemed to cut her breastmilk supply in half. This has been documented; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says hormonal birth control “is acceptable if women are informed of the risk of a decreased milk supply.”

So for me, or for most any woman who wants to keep breastfeeding exclusively, that’s out.
At my six-week postpartum doctor’s appointment, Dr. Doug George asked me what method of birth control we planned on using. I repeated Katy’s anectdotal information.
“So I’m not ready to get back on the pill,” I said. “Besides, I’m not sure whether we want another child or not. I think we’re going to just ‘pull and pray’ for now, as my Catholic friend calls it. If it happens, it happens.”

“That’s fine,” Dr. George replied. “Just as long as you know, it’s not 100 percent effective.”

For 16 years, I was a pro at not getting pregnant.

I first began taking the pill in college, and my debilitating heavy periods eased considerably. So, whether I was in a relationship or a dry spell, in addition to condoms, I stayed on the pill.

With the consent of my enlightened Jackson gynecologists, Dr. Tom Smith, and later, Dr. Annie Fenn, I took the pill continuously for several months, having a period only every few months. There’s now a pill marketed for that purpose, Seasonique.

After a while, my tree-hugging sister voiced her worries about all the hormones I was ingesting. I touted the pill’s benefits in protecting me against endometriosis, ovarian cysts, etc. Not to mention protecting me against babies, which I wasn’t prepared for, I reminded my sister, who at my last count had four children. Traveling to Memphis to watch her try to manage the four-ring circus was a dose of birth control in itself.

Still, I began to wonder whether all those hormones were good for me, so I tried the NuvaRing. We quite the ringy dingy thingy after it escaped its assigned seating one too many times.

Back to the pill.

I had a few minor “baby pains” back in 2001. These were a faint desire to be maternal, tempered by reality like debt, emotional immaturity and the living situation of an indentured servant.

So we acquired another birth control item: a puppy.

Mojo did child-like things. He needed consistent attention, peed on the floor so many times we considered diapers, entertained us with his antics and cost a few hundred dollars in shots and minor surgeries for a deeply cut paw and a growth on his ear. Good parenting training, if you ask me.

Around this time, several celebrities began mysteriously getting pregnant, ostensibly accidentally. A few of them are still with the Baby Daddy. “With all the technology available,” I sputtered to anyone who would listen, “how in the world are they still going ‘Oops!’”

A few things I never tried. The sponge? Ewww. The diaphragm? So 1970s. The shot? I hate needles, and the unpredictable periods it can cause scared away my inner control freak. Norplant? Way too alien-implant for me. The Mirena IUD seems great. I made an appointment for it once, but it’s pretty expensive to insert; it takes about two years for it to be as cost-effective as the pill.

For most of us new mothers, having a newborn requires so much time and attention, we’re not having much sex. That’s the most effective method of birth control I know, but it’s not endorsed by the men in our lives.

Desi comes out of her shell

2009-07-11T05:13:00.002-06:00

Hetero life mate Melanie spent more than an hour draping my nekkid belly and boobs with plastered strips. I giggled and shivered as she patted each one just so, her work of art.

After it was done, I was horrified at how huge my belly was. I put the plaster cast away, sure that I'd never show it to anyone. I would have trashed it immediately if I wasn't conscious of how hard Melanie worked on it.

On Friday, I saw Melissa Turley's photos of wee George, all snuggled inside the nest of her belly cast. I hadn't even considered that. Would Desi, at 6 1/2 months and more than double her birth weight at almost 19 pounds, fit in the belly?

These photos are the best two that I took during a frenzy of "Hey, I unearthed my camera from the bottom of my foot-deep pile on the kitchen table" yesterday.

I'm afraid if we lived in LA, we'd be pimping her for baby food or toy commercials.

You + Me + Baby makes three

2009-07-09T14:19:00.004-06:00

Ten years ago, I stood atop Snow King Mountain in front of a hundred or so people and paused a bit too long in a crucial part of my wedding ceremony.
Our minister asked, “Do you, Johanna, take Scott ... to be your husband ... as long as you both shall live?”
Wow. Forever is a really long time. As my brain zoomed around the question, I felt an instant of panic. Not that I wasn’t 99 percent sure of the commitment. I panicked because I realized that my half-second pause had turned into several seconds. Not cool. Scott started to look worried. Urgent repair needed.
I looked out at the crowd. Their faces echoed awkwardness. “What do you guys think?” I asked.
Cheers erupted, and with most of the audience urging me on, I said, “OK, I do!”
Fast forward a decade. Our adventures have included roughly 12 vacations, 10 emergency room visits, nine different vehicles, eight marriage therapy appointments, seven residences, five jobs, three tear-soaked separations (for a day, a week, a month), two dogs and one child. Roller coaster, I know.
I was 25 when we got married, Scott a year older. We both had a lot of growing up left to do. We spent a lot of time in the “power struggle” stage of our relationship.
As I turned 30, annual visits to the gynecologist included gentle hints: “Now would be good” if you want to get pregnant. In a sense, doctors asked, “What are you waiting for?”
Hmm. Good question. We weren’t ready.
You won’t ever be ready, friends said. Just do it, already.
After a blissful week of camping in my vintage Airstream, when I decided it was time for a child, Scott was on the same page. And that April night in 2008, in the Circus Circus RV Park in Las Vegas, we got down to business.
Before we “took out the goalie,” in Scott-speak, I made sure we discussed all the ramifications. I confess, because of anxiety, I acted a bit like the insecure Earl character in the movie Waitress. “You promise you won’t love the baby more than you love me?”
On Friday, as my husband and I celebrated our 10th anniversary with a rare date night, Scott admitted that he’s been infatuated with Desi. And perhaps he does love her a little more, in a totally unexpected, joyful way. As is his style, he softened the potentially hurtful news with humor.
“She’s still new, punkin,” he said. “You’re weathered.”
Ouch. Maybe I shouldn’t have “let myself go” quite this far.
Bob Skaggs, the licensed professional counselor here in Jackson who has seen Scott and I through years of small crises, often agrees with me, though. What can I say? I must be evolved.
“Absolutely, it was you two first,” Skaggs said Monday as I sought clarity, “and eventually, after she grows up, it will be just you two again. It’s important to work on that relationship during your years of child rearing so you have something to come back to.”
Several studies have shown that marital satisfaction dips after a child is born: Cowan, Tomlinson.
I attempted to prevent that. Postpartum, I continued to take the prescription antidepressant Lexapro, which I needed during pregnancy. I created routines to involve Scott in infant care: Bath times are a joint venture; he changes the morning diaper; he baby-sits while I work on Sundays. One of my goals for maternity leave was to strengthen our relationship, because I knew that once I returned to work, I’d have scant time for Scott.
In my admittedly limited experience of the past 15 years, I’ve learned that relationships don’t do well on autopilot. That lovin’ feelin’ doesn’t always maintain itself.
Dr. John Gottman co-authored a 2007 book, And Baby Makes Three. His research at the University of Washington has revealed that investing in your relationship helps your child.
“That relationship nourishes Baby’s development,” Gottman and his wife, Julie, write in the book’s introduction. “Children can’t thrive in stormy seas.”
Before Desi was born, Scott and I agreed to be more disciplined about disagreements than our own parents: No fighting in front of the baby. Research I read found that babies are sensitive to even unspoken anger and tension.
I do feel like I spend so much time caring for or entertaining Desi that I have much less attention to spend on my husband. But we talk about our marriage on a regular basis. We kiss. We say “I love you.” And I hope that as long as we enjoy each day while keeping our porch-rocking years in mind, our marriage will make it intact through the other side of this 18-year contract.
And I have to try to make sure that I have a wee bit of energy and fun left in my bank at the end of each day, after spending so much on Scott and Desi.
Because, as the saying goes, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Johanna is seeking qualified baby sitters for her next relationship-building plan: date night.
(PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED IN THE JULY 8, 2009 JACKSON HOLE NEWS&GUIDE)

Thanks a latte

2009-07-07T09:15:00.004-06:00

I'm a compulsive coffee counter tipper.

Seeing those 20-something boys and girls taking orders, steaming up a perfect latte, takes me back to the time when I worked as a waitress or bartender for less than minimum wage and depended on the grace of strangers for tippage that paid my rent.

I realize that with my latte-most-days habit, I'm easily spending $30-50 per month in counter service gratuity alone. Some would argue that those people get paid to do their jobs, just like I do, and nobody tips me. But I look at it as good karma, paying it forward (or backward in time), whatever the case may be.

Sometimes the barista looks like she's having a bad day. My dollar will hardly change that, but maybe my smile will help.

So, to all you latte slingers, register ringers and supper singers, I salute you.

The (almost) lost interview with a Queen

2009-06-23T17:04:00.002-06:00

Last week, I interviewed Jill Conner Browne, who was scheduled to appear this week at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference.

I had such a good time with her on the telephone, she in Jackson, Mississippi and me in Jackson, Wyoming, that I couldn’t wait to meet her. Unfortunately, her Mama is sick, so she had to cancel her talk at the conference. I couldn’t print an interview for an appearance that isn’t happening, so I’m going to print it here. Uncut, even, thanks to the limitless space that Cyberspace provides.

You can find Browne, THE Sweet Potato Queen, at her Web site ... or friend her on Facebook, or find her on Twitter as @spqueens.

Browne published The Sweet Potato Queens Book of Love in 1999, and has put out seven other titles since then. She sells merchandise, sponsors chapters of Queens, has a speaking tour. “It is a cult,” she says.

Q: How did you get started as a writer?
A: I had written for newspapers as a stringer for a number of years. I was divorced from The Antichrist and left heavily in debt by that marriage: he loved cashmere socks and racing tires. With no child support, I was raising my daughter by myself, and my mother chose the most inopportune time to have a stroke. I was working full-time for three newspapers. One of the papers changed hands, the new people that came in dropped my story with no preamble... I finally got one of them on the phone. He said, “Maybe it’s just me, but you’re just not funny.” Well, clearly it’s just you. Nobody has ever said to me, “You’re not funny.” All of the other queens, who are incredibly accomplished women and / or heiresses, said, “Why is it a big deal?” It’s my light bill. It was what I had to do to keep our heads above water. It was really the loss of that that put me so off-balance, spurred me to go and look for something else... it was the only reason I ever went to pursue a book deal.

Q: How would you describe your style?
A: I always say that if you don’t laugh out loud, I’ll personally refund your money. I have no illusions about my work, it ain’t War and Peace. I wouldn’t say that it’s Lit-er-a-ture. The humor is the vehicle through which the greater message is delivered. The books are deceptively deep.

Q: What’s funny about the South?
A: Everything. You might as well laugh. It is a poor region, historically, and very hot. So we would sit still and tell stories, that’s where the storytelling tradition comes from. Wasn’t a whole lot else to do. Willie Morris said that air conditioning and television were the destroyers of conversation. There are very few situations in life that you truly cannot change. Those that you can’t change, you’ve gotta figure out how to make fun out of it, or make fun of it. That is what resilient people do, and we are resilient people.

Q: You sign e-mails “Be Particular.” What is this “Be Particular” business?
A: That is the only advice my grandfather ever gave us. He never said “Be good,” “Be sweet” or “Be careful.” It’s the best advice ever given, the only advice you ever need. I can point to the times in my life when I haven’t followed it.

Q: Have you got advice for writers?
A: There’s no secret to it. We all, prior to writing, want to know a secret about it. You know what the secret is, just to write. Nobody likes writing, we all like having written. Write what you know, write what you like, write what pleases you. Write for yourself. Unless you’re writing textbooks. I think too many people try to write instead of writing. They think, “If I was a writer, how would I say this?” instead of just saying it.”

Q: Who is eligible to be a Queen?
A: Everybody, anybody. We have not found a line in the Queendom that we do not cross. We have men and women, gay and straight, men and women, children, married single, drunk, sober, whatever else you got. We got it, and are glad of it. The youngest are in utero, and the oldest one who marches in the parade comes from Midland, Texas. Everybody calls her Aunt Fay, and she will be 97 next year. There’s one who comes who is older, but she doesn’t march. She will be 102. We have 13 women from Indonesia this past year... they come from all over the world. Women, men, undecided, in-between. There is no line. I have the ashes of a queen from Arizona, who died, one of her fellow queens, got some of her ashes, boxed them up all nice, and Dutchie, she rides on the float.

Q: Are you able to support yourself now, just by writing?
A: Absolutely. I’ve had two number-one New York Times best-sellers. When I was very young, someone said to me, “You should do what makes your heart sing and the money will follow.” It won’t always take the form that you think it’s going to, but whatever you’re doing with your time should make you very happy, or you should not be doing it. There are times in our lives when we must do what’s necessary to fulfill our obligations. But even if we’re forced by circumstances to work at some job that’s not fulfilling us, we need to give the time and energy to something that does fulfill us.
Everybody really did get here with some sort of gift. I wanted to sing. I did not get the gift that I wanted. We spent so much time moaning over what we did not get that we completely miss what’s staring us in the face.

Q: How in the world did you write that first book while being a single mother and working full-time?
A: When I think about it, it makes me sick at my stomach. My daughter was in the second grade when I was writing the first book, I was going to work at 5 o’clock in the morning, and I still had to cut the grass, feed the dogs... Whatever got done, I did it. Then had to promote that, started the Web site... then with the second book, nothing went away. I had to still do all of those things, and write the second book. After the third book I finally gave up my day job. I was making enough money by then. When I look back at what all I did ... I’m satanically lazy. My goal in life is to lie down. I have no ambition whatsoever. I can sit still longer than anyone I know. Not doing jackshit is an absolute gift. There are many people who need my help. I hate to be busy. But I flat did it.

Q: Do you have any advice for people like me, who still aren’t done writing their first novel?
A: Can’t anybody finish it but you. I would write at 2-3 o’clock in the morning when you wake up and are terrified of something. If you’re going to be up in the middle of the night making up crap to worry about, you might as well be writing.

Q: But I just had a baby ...
A: You do get a free pass. Babies aren’t little but once. You enjoy that.

Yes, I've let myself go. I had a baby. What's your excuse?

2009-06-22T12:45:00.002-06:00

“Welcome to the club,” said the card my friend Margaret Gordon gave me at my baby shower.

I was looking forward to joining the Hot Mama Club. I imagined myself and other stylish mommies, toting along Mini-Mes, dressed in matching outfits, to lunch. Our large, tanned, life-giving bosoms, draped in jewels and cashmere, would be the envy of baby daddies and busboys alike.

Alas, that group of MILFs (that word won't pass muster in the newspaper) wouldn’t admit me. Rather, I’m part of the Bedraggled Mommy Society. Most days, I roll out of bed to the hungry, squawking cry of my babe. From that point until I leave the house, it’s a 90-10 balance of Desi-Mommy time. She gets fed, diapered, dressed, played with, tickled, snuggled, offered six appropriate items for chewing, rattling, watching. I get dressed. Usually.

My typical wardrobe for the past six months consists of “inside-out” clothes. Yes, they’re so sloppy, you can’t tell if they’re inside out or not. Basically, pajamas without the penguins. But they’re stretchy, dark colored, and suitable for sleeping, lounging or exercising. They work inside the house or out to the store.

I try to not wear these togs to work. However, given the choice between brushing my teeth and scrounging in Mount Clothesmore (my pile of clean-ish clothes) for pants that fit, I usually opt for teeth. You’re welcome, co-workers.

I attended a baby shower when Desi was 9 weeks old. I remember exactly what Desi wore, down to the leg warmers, but I probably just threw on my nicest inside-out attire. A group of Hot Mamas, most hailing from the Big City, was discussing how a fellow mother had “let herself go.” I don’t recall exactly what her sloppy sins were – slippers? unplucked eyebrows? bedhead? – but my Olympically groomed friend’s exact words are frozen in my mind: “They should kick her out of the club.”

I was horrified. They might as well have been talking about me. But I just got into the club. Could I really be kicked out so soon? Didn’t matter, as I haven’t changed my ways yet.

Sleep is the new crack, and if I have to choose between manicuring my nails or 20 minutes of snooze, take a guess at the winner.

While I was pregnant, my descent began into a Slovenly Sisterhood. Couldn’t see my feet, so pedicures became less pressing. Shaving my legs, I felt like a contortionist. I gave up on plucking the gray hairs that began blooming from my forehead as my fourth decade progressed.

Washing my hair every other day is now a long-forgotten luxury. My curly locks don’t seem to mind going four days without water, but a little dandruff has begun to accumulate. I shake it out, a la Breakfast Club, and keep going. The tangles are usually tethered into a ponytail, which makes it harder to see flakes.

Jackson Hole isn’t what I’d call a “makeup” town, anyway. My first year here, I gave up on the full-face makeup endemic to the South. Amazing how much clearer your skin is when you’re not plastering it with foundation every day. I opted instead for the glow that comes from exercise and a little sun.

At a kids’ birthday party on Saturday, friend Emily Siek recounted how she shaved time off her hygiene routine that day. She popped 1-year-old Sage in the tub with toys, then took her own shower and shampooed above her. Sage shrieked in protest – it was raining on her playtime.

My own bath time used to be a respite, a place where I soaked and read fine literature: celebrity porn like US Weekly, thought-provoking articles in Psychology Today or Bicycling. Now it’s a frantic two-minute scrub of the girly bits followed by hollering “Ready!” Then a squirming, nekkid baby lands in my lap for her turn.

Even sunscreen has become an afterthought. I slather the baby with it and forget to swipe myself.

Show me the new mother who has time to groom herself in the way she has been accustomed, and I will swear the child has been drugged or she’s not disclosing full-time help.

I’m pretty sure my friends don’t know what to say. Absent are the old comments like “lipstick on tooth” or “bra strap showing.” It would take too much energy for the hip 20-somethings to say “National Forest on legs, Snow White hairdo, cascading baby spitup stain on shirt, britches too tight, shopping bags under eyes ... Have a mint!”

Besides, they don’t want to hurt my feelings as I show off the latest baby pictures on my iPhone.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Johanna Love is plotting her second post-baby pedicure. Wish her luck as she scrabbles back into the ranks of the cute.

Balancing baby, lifestyle requires flashing flesh

2009-06-08T12:51:00.000-06:00

A hungry baby’s cry is unmistakable, and it only escalates until the siren is muted with a nipple.
If the baby is yours, you start to fret upon hearing the wail. “Oh, poor baby! I’m a terrible mother. How did I let you get so hungry?”
You could be embarrassed. “I must look like a total amateur! All these women are judging me.”
Every so often, the reaction is exasperation. “Again? You just ate not five minutes ago … well, maybe it was 50 minutes ago.”
The physical response is messier. Your body might kick into dispensing mode. Never let ’em see you sweat? Ha. Try to hide it when your chest begins to “milktate,” a word coined by the best friend character in Juno.
Lactation-speak calls it the “let-down reflex,” when hormones open the valve between milk glands and ducts. This is a necessary part of breastfeeding, but it would be way cooler if it always only happened after Tab A was inserted in Slot B.
The inevitable next thought is logistical: “How in the world am I going to feed you in this taxi / on this bike / in the grocery aisle / in seat 16B of this airplane?”
You could spend perfectly good money on specialty poncho-like devices – Hooter Hiders and the like. And I’m sure you will always remember to tote said Hooter Hider along, since you already look like you’re outfitted for the South Pole with a carseat, diaper bag, purse, breast pump and toys everywhere you go.
No? You forgot your Hooter Hider? Time for Plan B.
I started out motherhood with some degree of modesty, I swear. But when my child begins to yowl like a possessed wolverine, that draws more attention than the alternative: a quick presentation of breast and a prolonged, contented slurping sound.
In January, I attached the baby and walked around the grocery store with her under a blanket. I avoided eye contact and let my vegetarian sister grab a pork loin off the shelf as I used both hands to carry and position her for feeding.
In February, I flew to Phoenix and followed the pediatrician-recommended advice of breastfeeding during takeoff and landing to prevent painful pressure from building in baby’s ears. A scarf hid the hooter without suffocating the eater.
A week later, while waiting for other passengers to board our shuttle bus, she began to complain of hunger pains. I hung a hooter into her carseat. Not enough time to mess with unbuckling. That snack helped tide her over until we reached our destination.
In May, I unleashed a boob on our picnic blanket while watching Desi’s daddy play softball. Her sun bonnet was the perfect cover. I operated under the premise that, from a distance, it looked like she was giving me a prolonged hug.
Long bike rides are a challenge. It would be ideal to invent some sort of bicycle-powered breast pump. Milk would snake down a tube into an inverted bottle in the baby trailer, and she could sip at her leisure, sort of like a hamster watering bottle. As this device isn’t yet on the market, I’m forced to stop pedaling and find a place to sit Indian-style for 10 minutes.
A larger feat is getting Desi to focus on food. She is so interested in the colorful outdoors, it takes her a few minutes to stop gazing around and eat.
On Saturday, my mother-in-law was kind enough to drive Desi to the rest stops during an organized bicycle ride in Logan, Utah. I fed her in the front seat of the truck, and spotted a few more of the 2,600 women juggling babies at Little Red Riding Hood.
Our grandmothers mostly stayed home with their infants. Many of our moms raised kids when formula was in vogue. My generation of mothers seems to be the first with the societal expectation that we can do it all: work, exercise, play, breastfeed, run a household.
It’s possible. I’m doing it. But I’m tired a lot. I took a pay cut to work a few less hours per week, and I have put beaucoup hours on my breast pump. I have a support system: part-time nanny, weekly cleaning crew, involved husband, doting Grammy.
So if I have to flash a little flesh to keep my baby happy and healthy, and myself sane by getting out and about, look the other way. And after latch-on, give a little smile. And a thumbs-up wouldn’t hurt.
______________________________________________
This column will appear on June 10 in the Jackson Hole News&Guide.

SHOES

2009-06-03T18:51:00.004-06:00

Sidis for sale ...

While my weight has fluctuated quite a bit during my adult life, at least my feet have always been a constant, a la Jennifer Weiner’s In Her Shoes character Rose.
During the past decade, I must have amassed a collection of about 50 pairs of footwear. I didn’t feel bad about this over-consumption because they all had a specific purpose, from date-night heels to ankle-preserving high-top hiking boots to specialized shoes for kayaking, road cycling, mountain biking, scrambling, rock climbing. Sandals for water sports, fashion and kicking around. Snow boots in dressy, slouchy, athletic and funky. Sneakers for the gym, for casual hikes, dog walking. Four pair of cowboy boots, one that I actually ride in. Oh, and three pairs of ski boots: cross-country, skate and downhill. I only indulged in one pair each of the expensive ones: MBT, Frye, Dansko. Dare I say practical fashion?
Here’s the thing nobody warns you about, ladies. Pregnancy can make your feet grow. Oh, it’s just swelling, people said. They’ll shrink. Nope. Mine grew between a half and whole size.
Can you bind your feet? Melanie asked, in best-friend supportive panicked voice. Nah.
A few of my old favorites still fit, but mostly I’m paring down, giving away, selling them. I’m sure my collection will never reach its former glory, because now I have to buy shoes for Mini-me.

Retail Therapy, or, How I Staved Off Baby Blues

2009-06-01T18:00:00.003-06:00

It was Jan. 9 that I began to feel trapped. I know the date, because I checked my credit card statement.

I was tethered to the baby by a distance of about 20 yards. Whenever I’d try to sneak away, Scott would say “When did she eat last? When are you coming back?”

At 3 weeks old, Desi wasn’t eating from a bottle yet, so I had to be with her whenever she might be hungry, which was every hour and a half.

Life as a dairy animal was lonely.

I missed my friends, the newsroom, the freedom to dash out somewhere. I cried some. Desi was, by all accounts, an “easy” baby, and if she hadn’t been I might have hurled myself off a cliff. Well, OK, perhaps off the porch into a soft snowbank.

These feelings were not discussed at length in baby class. With my sister gone back to Memphis, husband and friends all working, I was looking for any way out. Of the house, that is.

So I packed Desi into her carseat, and we went shopping. Retail therapy netted us some socializing, gear to make this new phase of life easier and a much-needed spirit-lifting dose of style.

Our spree happened to coincide with the politicians’ call to lift our economy by spending. Hey, we did our part.

I hit Teton Kids, hard. I returned a masculine baby sling that Scott refused to wear. He seemed much more comfortable holding Desi from the platform of the couch than strapping her on. I also cashed in a tiny outfit, same as another top-and-pants combo, but in another pattern. With $120 in credit, I was able to buy a steezy [look how hip I am! That means stylish] green Baby Bjorn and a snowflake-patterned Hotsling. These baby-toting apparatuses enabled us to do even more shopping.

Off to DD Camera Corral. My little point-and-shoot died in the delivery room before Desi was born. I knew iPhone photos were not going to appease Desi’s growing fan club. While deciding on a new camera, I got the 411 on passport photos for Desi, but decided not to buy one until we had a trip planned.

When our BOB Revolution stroller arrived in the mail, it got scant time to rest in the garage. I toned up the bed-rest-atrophied legs by taking laps on the ice-covered Cottonwood subdivision streets. Desi looked like a teddy bear in her giant, fluffy snowsuits.

When the stroller craved indoor time, we took a few Stroller Strides classes at the Rec Center. But its roomy pouch underneath seemed to want more. So we drove two hours each way to stroll TJ Maxx, Target and Grand Teton Mall in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

With so much time each day being spent on the baby’s needs – food, diaper, clothing – I paid less attention to my own appearance. It didn’t really matter whether I had greasy hair or not; wherever we went, Desi stole the show.

We cruised Town Square, searching for easy-access V-neck tops and pants that might fit a re-emerging waist.

Baby-wearers will know: It’s impossible to try on clothes with a baby strapped to you. Then again, modeling clothes may be the last thing you want to do after you realize you’re a full size larger than you were when you started all this baby-making business.

When scouring the sales racks at Boot Barn (nee Corral West), I remarked aloud to a tall woman whose husband carried an infant, “Don’t you just loooove post-baby clothes shopping?” My voice, I hoped, carried an intended tone of sarcasm.

She fired back, “Yeah, my boobs grew like a size with each baby. And I have eight.” Eight. I felt like a whiner, and because she didn’t say “had” rather than “have,” I got the sense perhaps she wasn’t stopping her streak. Not for me, honeybee.

Retail therapy – and, in the interest of full disclosure, Lexapro – got me safely through the mental health gauntlet of seasonal affective disorder, postpartum depression, baby blues and cabin fever.

But the credit card polishing had to come to an end. There are so many things we don’t really need to buy new.

Most weekends, we now visit yard sales to search for baby clothes and toys. Prices range from free and nearly free to a few dollars. We’ve scored jackets, an outdoor swing, carseat flair [dangling toys], books and a faux-fur vest, in sizes from 6 months to 4T.

Once a month, I comb through Desi’s closet. I remove the too-short onesies, pants and dresses and squirrel them away for friends who are pregnant. Then I dive into the tubs of new-to-us clothes. Hey, this will fit now! It’s closet shopping at its finest.

Now that I’m back at work, most of our shopping is utilitarian: groceries, diapers, wine. We can spend an hour cruising the aisles of a grocery store, Desi wide-eyed at bright colors, strange faces and smells. We visit with friends and acquaintances, and it feels good to live within our means again.

Toes and other 5-month things

2009-05-25T20:43:00.005-06:00

Desi is fascinated by her toes now. She puts them in her mouth every chance she gets.

When she plays on her bouncy seat or under her activity gym, she props her legs up so she can grab her toes.

Toes must be the hottest new toy. Or maybe she's just got flexible hamstrings like her mama.

What the heck, let's just make this a picture post.

Here's one of her in her Carhartts.

And one of her with Aunt Amy.

And another one at dinner with Amy and Mike and Marcus and Steve and Tina ... Desi doing her famous "Don't shoot!" pose.

Birthing a column

2009-05-13T21:48:00.004-06:00

After a decade or so of writing and editing for the newspaper, I finally published a column today. I had proposed many columns over the years, but the other editors kept shooting me down. Waiting for me to find the right topic, they said. As such, I finally felt under control enough to write a sample, and they approved it without delay. So "Mommy Love" debuted. It will publish every other week. Here's the first installment...

Birth offers lesson in rolling with changes

“I think we need to do a C-section.”

My heart sank. Really? I had guzzled organic milk, sprinted away from the microwave for nine months and driven on fumes to avoid pumping my own gasoline, all in the name of keeping my first birth as natural as possible. And by extension, to keep my baby as healthy as possible.

But with blood pressure climbing higher by the week, plus the ever-present headaches and three weeks of bed rest, I was done with pregnancy. Dr. Doug George and I decided it was time to induce labor with synthetic hormones.

“Your baby is not getting any better in there now, she’s not getting any smarter,” Dr. George said. “She’s just getting bigger.”

Reason enough for me to agree to induction. My husband Scott’s massive cranium already had me terrified of how I was going to squeeze this canteloupe out of a Bratwurst-sized orifice, so if she didn’t get bigger, that was fine by me.

In the back of my mind was the idea that induction wasn’t the way I planned to go into labor, but I was worried enough about my blood pressure not to care. A foggy thought – one intervention in birthing leads to another – crossed my mind, but I ignored it. My friend Katy Gray had just given birth to Milo with no problems after being induced. Piece of cake.

I checked into St. John’s Medical Center on Dec. 18, when nurses administered Cervidil, which is supposed to ripen the cervix. At 6 a.m. on Dec. 19, they began the Pitocin drip. That drug causes contractions. I was OK with the pain until about 9 a.m. when Dr. Laura Vignaroli broke my water with a device that looked like a crochet hook. Then I demanded an epidural – stat. Labor continued, with me drifting in and out of consciousness and waiting for the drugs to magically urge my baby south. She didn’t cooperate.

I labored for about 11 hours, endured plenty of pain and then I had to have a significant, unplanned surgery. It just didn’t seem fair.

But my baby’s heart rate was showing that she was stressed by labor. She wasn’t descending very far into the birth canal. Tapped to emerge at 39 weeks gestation, she just wasn’t ready. I think she would have preferred to hang out in the womb another few weeks. The only good reason to come out is that it was getting crowded in there, like Town Square during Old West Days.

My friend Michelle Ohmart said she thinks the best advice anyone could give a pregnant woman is to roll with the changes. No matter how much you prepare, things never turn out the way you plan.

Letting go of expectations has been an issue of mine ever since I can remember. I’d spend weeks dreaming of the field trip, only to be disappointed that nobody wanted to sit next to me on the bus, the exhibit smelled weird and lunch was crummy.

So roll we did, into the operating room, where doctors Vignaroli and Giovannini Anthony sliced me open and pulled out my baby. Did I mention that it seemed like every doctor in town had a hand in my, uh, delivery?

And she was perfect. Desi Alexandra Love Edwards weighed a robust 7 pounds, 11 ounces, measured at 20 inches long with a 14.5-inch cranium. She got a 9 out of 10 on her first test in life, the Apgar score of baby vigor.

I missed all the weighing and measuring fuss while I got the last restful sleep I can remember, in the recovery room.

Although it wasn’t the birthing “experience” I dreamed about, the C-section had its advantages. Codeine. An extra day or two of nurses helping me in the hospital. Everything intact down below. Desi’s beautiful, un-smushed head. And Scott got to have those first magical minutes of parenthood for himself.
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Johanna Love does not claim to be an expert on parenting. Her only qualification for writing this column is that she has kept her child alive and seemingly happy thus far. Her column will appear in this spot every two weeks.

Sicky poo

2009-03-15T07:44:00.006-06:00

As much as it sucks to be sick, I've discovered that it's worse when your baby is ill.

For all of Desi's life so far, she has only cried for good reason, and it has almost always been easy to discern the problem and fix it.

Last week, after some snotty-nosed brat wandered over at the pediatrician's office and touched her, Desi got sick. After a few days of stuffiness, it got worse. I felt a rattle in her chest on Tuesday night, and when we saw Dr. Little on Wednesday, he said she had a respiratory problem and secondary infections in both ears. She needed to be admitted to the hospital. Watching the vampires stick her several times, draw what seemed like half her blood and insert an IV was heartbreaking. She screamed like a coyote was chewing on her leg.

The fever made her listless and fussy, and she went "off her feed" a bit, only nursing about half as much as usual. IV antibiotics and Tylenol helped with the infection. But she has RSV, a childhood virus that attacks the lungs. It will make her more susceptible to asthma, and since Scott and I both have that affliction, now it's pretty much guaranteed for her.

After a couple days at St. John's, her fever improved but her lungs got worse. She also tested positive for Influenza B, but that could have been a false positive; the state health lab should confirm by Monday.

They took her IV out on Friday at 11 pm, but her lungs kept getting worse. On Saturday, I watched as her airway closed off and she couldn't breathe for about 7 seconds. I lost it. It's terrifying.

She's been on oxygen for five days, having her nose suctioned regularly, undergone breathing treatments with Albuterol and been poked and prodded like a 4-H steer.

It's terrible to not be able to make it better for her. After the first night, I gave up on the bassinet and just snuggled up in the hospital bed with her.

I'm already behind on my thank-you notes, and now I need to write more, people have been so wonderful. I think the worst is behind us, but I'll update soon.

Can you believe I typed all this on my iPhone? I must have needed to vent. Thank you in advance for healing thoughts, well wishes and prayers.

UPDATE: 3/19/09
Desi is three months old today, and recovering well. We got out of the hospital on Monday (three days ago), and she's still on 1/8 liter of oxygen, but she's getting more and more spunk back every day. Obviously one photo posted here is her looking pitiful in the hospital bed, and the other photo is Scott and I giving her an albuterol breathing treatment at home.

I go back to work on Sunday, and I am a little worried about leaving her since she's been sick, but we have found a wonderful nanny candidate, Lisa, who's starting today, and I'm so comforted knowing that Desi is in capable hands. The hands of an OB department nurse/mother of three/grandmother, no less.

"On Marriage"

2009-03-01T13:48:00.003-07:00

I wrote a review today for a wonderful book, "Fairy Tale Blues," by Jackson Hole writer Tina Welling, a wonderful author and friend. The book reminded me of this passage, titled "On Marriage," by Khalil Gibran. I even quoted a bit in my review. My friend, Sheri LeVasseur, read it for us at our wedding.

You were born together, and together you shall be forevermore.
You shall be together when white wings of death scatter your days.
Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness,
And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
Love one another but make not a bond of love:
Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.
Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.
Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf.
Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.
Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.
For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.
And stand together, yet not too near together:
For the pillars of the temple stand apart,
And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

– khalil gibran

Fashionista, part one

2009-02-27T19:36:00.004-07:00

Growing up, I never had Barbies. Scorned them, in fact. But now that I have my own little doll to dress up, I can't resist.

The pink sweatshirt is "Small Paul" by Paul Frank, sized 3-6 months and already fits. The white ruffled bolero is Cherokee from Target (size 24 months, rolled up sleeves!) over a tie-dyed T-shirt that was a gift from Margie Lynch, procured at Guchiebird's boutique in Driggs, Idaho. And the black-and-white dress is Ralph Lauren, size 3 months and already way too short, paired with purple-and-black BabyLegs leg warmers. White blankie from Macy's, courtesy Grammy.

Many of her cool clothes are gifts, and many of them won't fit for months to come (and a few she's outgrown already before I had a chance to photograph them!), but others are hand-me-downs, items from the clearance rack and gently used things from yard sales.

I would imagine that children in Florida or California could get by with a substantially pared-down wardrobe. But in this climate, where the temperature can swing 50 degrees or more in a day, it's important even for babies to layer. It's not like she's sitting in the house all day. We've got people to see, places to go and adventures to have.

Desi's Big Adventure, Part 2: Photos from Phoenix

2009-02-27T19:27:00.003-07:00

Desi got a great deal on wine at the World Market, enjoyed her first hike without quite falling into any cacti, didn't know what to make of the giant ladybug float, and exhibited her large milk-belly in her swimsuit: Old Navy bikini top and Speedo swim diaper bottom.

We go back to the pediatrician, Dr. Little, for a checkup on Monday. I am predicting, based on what I've seen at Stroller Strides class and elsewhere, that she will be near 100 percent of the curve for height and weight at 10 weeks. She was at 90 percent for height and 50 percent for weight when she was measured at her last visit a month ago. But she was gaining nearly three ounces per day during one stretch since then.

Desi and Daddy

2009-02-24T09:49:00.002-07:00

Sometimes I feel like I am the utilitarian parent-- feed the baby, feed, feed, feed, diaper -- and Scott gets to be the fun guy. He is fantastic at making Desi smile or giggle, making the perfect "bowwowowow" noise with her pacifier dog, and coaching her daily to ensure "Daddy" is her first word.

Here they are hanging out on the couch. She gets fussy during tummy time by herself, so Scott puts her on his chest and makes her exercise her neck and shoulders that way.

Next pic: Obviously, early-morning snuggles.

Here they are watching TV together. Obviously a sport, right? Because it's sort of between seasons, the latest television obsession is ultimate fighting matches. If she continues watching this, she might not be the smartest kid in the class, but she could beat up the smartest kid.

Such a good daddy!

Desi's big adventure, part one

2009-02-11T12:03:00.006-07:00

As I was suffering a pretty decent case of cabin fever this month, I decided to take advantage of maternity leave to get a little sun and fun. If i'm only getting a couple hours of sleep at a time, why not do it somewhere interesting? I can breastfeed and walk around in a sleep-deprived fog anywhere. And I was desperate to prove to myself that having a child hasn't changed my adventurous approach to life, that I won't become some soccer mom without her own interests.

HLM Melanie and I plotted a trip to Phoenix. The recession has helped drop travel costs, so we got 50 percent or so off rooms at Carefree Resort. Unfortunately, Mel had an ear-fluid issue that prevented her from flying, so Desi and I headed to the airport on our own on Feb. 10, and Mel drove 20 hours and arrived the next day to join us. Sitting in JH Airport waiting on a flight that Delta delayed due to a mechanical issue, I began to wonder if I was crazy, if I had bitten off a bit more than I could chew by traveling alone with a 7 1/2-week old child.

But I've become more and more convinced that I won the baby lottery. There was zero fussing without good reason, many times I thought Desi was enjoying the trip as much as I did, and it was easier than I expected to meet her needs without another adult for backup. We missed Scott, but respected his desire to stay home and work on building his business up for spring. And he doesn't have baby blues, he didn't "need" a vacation like I did.

Armed with small bills to tip the shuttle driver who loaded our luggage, bellhop who delivered it to the room and shuttle driver who ferried us to a trailhead and to Target, we had a great time without throwing out my back. And strangers in the hotel, on the planes and in the airport helped drag my bag, open my purse, fold my stroller and open doors.

Our first night, we visited the campfire and met the fire tender whose name tag said Lance, but he introduced himself as Serendipity. We inhaled pinon pine and mesquite smoke for a bit, chatting with guests and Serendipity before seeking sustenance. The resort's restaurant was closed, but they were serving dinner in the bar. So we rolled in, sat up at the bar with Desi's car seat on an upside-down high chair, and ordered food. Before you could say "wine list, please," Dex the DJ came by and dropped off an inch-thick binder of karaoke selections. I popped Desi into her sling and carried her while singing Patsy Cline's "Crazy," Deana Carter's "Strawberry Wine," and Bon Jovi's "Born to be my baby." I had no intention of singing that night, but my philosophy of life is simple: participate, don't spectate.

The next day, we tackled Black Mountain for Desi's first hike. It was a great workout and spiritual experience, stepping steadily up the trail surrounded by cacti, singing birds and bright sunshine.

We also gave Desi her first swimming experience, shopped a bit, went for several great walks and enjoyed time with Melanie.

On Friday, I was burping Desi when I smelled what seemed like a dead mouse. Weird, I thought, because she had been in the pool Thursday, and Melanie and I gave her a bath in the sink on Friday. So I got a rag and washed her hair. Saturday, I smelled it again and discovered to my horror that a fat fold on her neck had a whitish-yellow discharge and awful red rash. After a Web search and a dozen phone calls to the pediatrician on call in Jackson, my sister and neighbors (to try to wake up Scott, who didn't answer his phone), I went to Whole Foods to get cornstarch-based powder and goldenseal. The employee I consulted asked to see the infection, and he recommended that I get Desi to a doctor right away. The closest thing was the emergency room at the Mayo Clinic, where they weighed her (12 pounds, 6 ounces at 8 weeks!), inspected her and gave me a prescription for Nystatin, an antifungal cream. "It's your first baby, isn't it?" said a knowing nurse. Apparently yeast infections happen in babies.

So when we got home, Scott helped me give her a thorough bath and scrubbed ALL of her fat folds, not just the ones on her legs I had been extra-vigilant about.

Info that may be only interesting to moms or people curious about how the heck we accomplished flying without help:

I thought for days about the logistics, and ended up doing the following.
• Converted diaper bag to backpack with extra straps
• Sent stroller and suitcase full of clothes via car with Mel
• Put Desi in Baby Bjorn front carrier
• Checked one suitcase for $15
• Packaged her carseat, Bundle Me sleeping bag, dangly flower handle flair and carseat base in a plastic bag so that airline baggage handlers (aka bulls in the china shop) wouldn't damage it. We borrowed it from Margaret, after all.
• Dragged Desi's suitcase (yes, I broke down and bought her a suitcase for this trip, on sale from Overstock.com. A mini X-case, it should be carry-on bombproof for years and last her many, many trips to Grandma's or anywhere else we want to go.) as my one official carry-on.

On the way back, I decided that I hadn't really needed the carseat base (sent it home with Mel), and put the Bundle Me and flower flair into a suitcase, thus eliminating the need to package the carseat in plastic.

I also took the stroller with me on the flights home, and had mixed feelings about doing so. I gate-checked it on two flights, from Phoenix to Salt Lake and Salt Lake to Jackson. It worked magnificently as a luggage cart, saved my back from extra baby-carrying weight and wasn't too hard to fold up and hand over. But the distance we had to walk between gates was fairly minimal, and pulling the baby out of the stroller and folding it up while holding her wasn't the easiest. The security people were irked that I didn't want to fold it up to put it through the suitcase screener, so they had to hand-inspect it. In the future, I might have not dragged it with us through the airport.

My personal lactation consultant

2009-01-10T15:11:00.002-07:00

I was so focused on giving birth and not being pregnant any more that I didn't do a whole lot of reading or planning about breastfeeding. All-natural, easy-peasie, right? Well, my milk supply didn't come in right away, Desi began losing weight, "too much" weight, according to various nurses and pediatricians, and I was getting conflicting opinions from a half-dozen nurses about how to handle it: supplement with formula, pump, etc. This led up to a major meltdown on my last morning in the hospital, but "the milkman" arrived the next day and it's been pretty smooth sailing ever since.

The hospital's lactation consultant was out of town for the holidays, but I figure that I've got my own eight-pound consultant. Desi, when should we eat? Now? Okay, I wasn't doing much, just trying to slam a glass of water or find the remote control or pet little jealous Mojo. No problem, missy, here I am.

My consultant has deemed it necessary to feed her roughly 3 and a half hours per day. That doesn't count the pre-feeding groggy wakeup minutes or the milk-coma burp sessions or the snuggling, jiggling and rocking her to sleep afterward. Some days it's only 3 hours of solid feeding time, the record is 4 hours. So Desi's eating occupies a solid chunk of our waking hours.

Only once so far in my postpartum time have I had a major meltdown. I was so exhausted and emotional on Dec. 26, when she was a week old, that Scott began to bring Desi into the bedroom with me and I said something like "Don't you dare bring that baby near me!" I collapsed into bed, and when Des demanded food, Scott was ready to give her a bottle of formula. My uber-mom sister, Edie, refused to let that happen. Instead, she brought Desi in and attached her to my boob while I was basically still half-asleep. The La Leche League owes her a medal.

Engrish as a warning sign

2009-01-10T14:59:00.003-07:00

I should have known even before opening the box that using this battery charger was a bad idea.

Let me back up. Upon moving this fall, we lost an important box, one with my backup hard drive, printer, and, I THOUGHT, my digital camera battery charger and other cables. So with Desi's due date rapidly approaching, I began cruising the Web for a new battery charger. Can't have a non-functioning camera with a baby on the way. Average price for a new charger? $70 or so. But a search on eBay revealed a charger for just $20, including a spare battery. Perfect.

A week or so later, said charger arrived in the mail, postmarked Hong Kong, with this hilarious Engrish on the box. I charged up the spare battery and forgot about it.

After 12 hours of labor on Dec. 19, I was being wheeled into surgery for an emergency C-section (Desi just did NOT want to come out on her own!) when Hetero Life Mate and Chief Photographer Melanie put the Hong Kong-charged battery into the camera and fried it. Yes, the camera. No amount of TLC would bring it back to life, even after I located the correct charger and bought a new $52 battery. So now it's sitting on a shelf at the Pentax repair place in Littleton, Colo., and I've got blurry iPhone photos of Desi's birth day and the week after.

I did splurge on a Canon G10 once I was out and about after getting home from the hospital. Great photos from that camera being posted soon!

TGFT

2008-12-29T08:21:00.003-07:00

"Thank God for techology."

That means the swing, sling, pacifier that I swore I wouldn't let her use (I folded after about 36 hours), "Breast friend" pillow, and mostly the application on my iPhone, BabyTracker, that lets me keep tabs on how long she nurses at each breast and how often (uh, it's OFTEN).

I don't know how women did it in the old days.

Anyhoo, more details to follow about the birth of Desi Alexandra Love Edwards. Just time to post a few photos before it's time to return to my life as a dairy animal.

Here's a pic of her in a bunny bath towel after her first bath, one of us on day two at St. John's Medical Center, and another of her kickin' it in her crib.

She is, in short, amazing. Scott and I are smitten.

Here we go ...

2008-12-18T13:35:00.002-07:00

The headache began at about 7 p.m. Wednesday night, roughly about the same time as some pretty good contractions. Two Tylenol. Two more at midnight and 1 a.m. didn't make the headache go away. I woke up Scott and made him check my blood pressure -- 167/102 -- and although the home cuff has always been high, it hasn't been THAT high.

Finally slept until 5 a.m. Two more Tylenol and two more at 6 a.m. and I was able to sleep until 10.

Dr. G doesn't want to wait any more. During my appointment at 11 a.m. today, we decided that 39 weeks is all little Johanna Junior gets; for her sake and mine, it's time to induce. I go in at 6:30 or so tonight for Cervedil to help ripen my cervix, and then if contractions haven't begun on their own, they'll induce those with Pitocin on Friday morning. With any luck, she'll be born on Friday, Dec. 19.

Oh, and we're supposed to get a hefty snowstorm overnight tonight and tomorrow morning.

Cross your fingers for us!

Bicycle-sicles and other crimes

2008-12-10T17:58:00.003-07:00

It was a walk of shame.

I dragged my Trek 8500 into Fitzgerald's Bicycles yesterday after almost a year of neglect. From being buried in a snowbank last winter to going the entire summer with flat tires that I never bothered to change, my poor "spare bike" is in quite a state. Its handlebars were bent by an ice chunk flying off the roof at work. Probably the same roof slide that bent a wheel rim and put the dying saddle over the edge, from still rideable into permanent mush.

Yes, I'm s'posed to be on bed rest, but the doctor said I could take one 15-minute walk per day, and yesterday I used it to run this errand. It was an important one. This bike, circa 2000, is the one that I learned to use clipless pedals on, the first one I used to ride trails in Sun Valley, the one I rode for four years before I considered having more than one bike. Now I've got a fancypants double suspension mountain bike, a solid road bike and about 80 percent share in a pedicab, this is my spare bike, the errand bike/grocery getter/town bike. Since this photo was taken, she's gotten a rear rack outfitted with a "trunk bag," which holds plenty of stuff and has fold-down panniers. Perfect for the commute to work, post office, a few groceries.

After tons of online shopping during my bed rest, in which I didn't pull the trigger on any purchases, I decided the best present I could get for myself and JJ would be getting my town bike ready to ride, and next summer, pull a trailer so JJ can come along. I need to get back in shape, and I love biking on errands.

Still, it was tough to drag her into Fitzy's, rear wheel not exactly spinning well and two flat tires. The boys in the shop were extremely sweet – seems like they may have seen worse cases of neglect. But if there were a child protection services for aluminum steeds, I'm sure one of them would have been on the phone.

I took in my studded snow tires for them to install, picked out a new saddle -- cushy, as I'm assuming I'll be enduring a fair amount of trauma down there in days -- moustache handlebars, and ordered the full-on tuneup. What a good present! I can't wait. Now to see whether anyone will spring for the bike trailer ...

New thing to obsess about: Babyzilla

2008-12-02T19:41:00.003-07:00

Many of you know that I saw Dr. V until 20 weeks pregnancy (halfway, for those unfamiliar with gestation) and then switched to Dr. G. So Dr. V hadn't seen me as a patient until today, almost 37 weeks. I needed to see her today because Dr. G was busy. She measured, she probed, she felt up my belly. She stepped back and said, "That's a big baby." It wasn't just the words that struck fear into my heart, it was her face. The way her eyes stayed wide.

We discussed induction for reasons of high BP, and she assured me that at 37 or 38 weeks, JJ's lungs would be mature, and for the last couple or few weeks, all she'd be doing in the womb is gaining weight. And apparently, she's already a corn-fed little heifer. God help me. As if I weren't apprehensive enough about squeezing a watermelon through a garden hose.

At least it's not tick season...

2008-11-29T11:29:00.003-07:00

A whole new slate of annoyances appeared during the final trimester of pregnancy. Worse than the hemorrhoids and dark moles and two tiny stretch marks were two especially distressing symptoms: high blood pressure and skin tags.

The high blood pressure, if it leads to preecclampsia, could be the scariest, leading to coma and death in some women and babies. But it's mostly a quiet, sneaky issue.

The skin tags are a constant vexation. It's almost like a new one appears each day, a teensy clump of skin that just barely hangs on in a strange place, like armpit or hipbone or under-breast. I scratched so much at one under my belly (out of sight, out of control...) that it bled. I sliced one while shaving an armpit and was in stinging agony for five minutes after trying to apply even the natural deodorant. I've been convinced that these are ticks, ingrown hairs or other things that might be easily removed. Not so. A tag, or something like it, is even growing on my bottom lip. At least it's not tick season, so I'm not obsessively trying to check them all.

Then, there's the house arrest. On Nov. 19, Dr. G told me to go to part-time work. Then on Nov. 26, he put me on bed rest due to pregnancy-induced hypertension. It occurs in about 5 percent of pregnancies, so I've read. Age, weight, family history all may have something to do with it, or it could just be bad luck. My mom had it with all three pregnancies.

I've been scanning through my preg journal trying to find an earlier BP; mid-August (yes, 20 pounds ago, at 20 weeks of pregnancy) it was 118/64, and it's been a few points lower than that my whole adult life, so I'm a little freaked about it being high. At least it's taking my mind off the swelling. Or maybe the bed rest has alleviated the swelling. Something like that.

Excessive salt intake isn't a likely culprit, although that was a theory of the 1970s and 80s. So I'm still trying to stay calm while getting more and more anxious about whether or not bed rest is really helping much (studies vary, although it's widely practiced among obstetricians). I feel like I needed an extra class about pregnancy complications.

I'm getting along great with Dr. G, but I'm starting to sense that he's a bit of a "wait-and-see" guy when it comes to deciding how to handle a complication, to see how severe it gets. I would prefer to plan for whether or not a medical induction might be necessary, and I'm driving myself crazy reading on the Web about the risks of induction vs. letting it ride, and what level of BP is harmful to the baby, and at what level of protein in the urine, edema and blood pressure do they diagnose preecclampsia, and when it's severe enough to consider induction.

Moving has slightly complicated my blog posts. Somehow we lost the box that had my printer, backup hard drive, cords and charging devices. So I've had no way to charge my digital camera. I finally broke down a couple days ago and ordered a new charger, only to realize a bit late that it's shipping from Hong Kong, and there's no guarantee when it will arrive. Hmm.

Join with me in wishing, hoping and praying that little JJ will want to arrive early, so I can avoid all of the induction problems? That would be swell. Pun clearly intended.

Death, discord and decompressing

2008-11-09T20:33:00.003-07:00

I was sitting in the obstetrician's office for my 32-week appointment when I got the call: my maternal grandfather had died after a couple of heart episodes. Although he was 96, nobody seemed to have anticipated his quick demise.

I was on the second day of a week's vacation that I had scheduled to unpack in our new place, visit the Salt Lake City IKEA for a few items, finish outstanding freelance work and decompress before the birth.

Women aren't supposed to fly at more than 36 weeks pregnant. If I flew back to Memphis for the funeral, I'd be almost 33 weeks by the time I got home. But there was little question in my mind that I needed to go. Memories of my PaPaw included how he'd play "bear trap" with his long legs, snatching up squealing children and locking them up. He'd tirelessly patch the flat tubes on my bicycle. And when I turned 18, his was the best graduation present I got: his signature as a cosigner on the loan so that I could buy my first car, a red 1988 Firebird.

I wrote this obituary between the Memphis airport and the funeral home in Senatobia, Miss., feverishly interviewing my mom in the car. The photo is of PaPaw a year ago at his 95th birthday party.

Arkabutla, Miss. resident Charles Robert “Charlie Bob” Hammond, 96, died on Oct. 29 after a short illness.
Born Sept. 22, 1912 in Newhardt, Ark. to Charles Morgan Hammond and Glen Pifer, he was the eldest of two children. His father, a country doctor who graduated from Memphis Hospital Medical College in 1902, had many different jobs in the Mississippi River delta. He also patented the iron lung in 1907.
He missed so much school in first grade, sickened by the 1918 flu epidemic, that he was a year behind his age group. He graduated in 1932 from Humes High School in Memphis, Tenn.
After graduation, he worked as a skilled laborer for Firestone, making tires for passenger cars. Years after retirement, he would insist on having Firestone tires.
In 1930, he fell in love with Harley-Davidson motorcycles. He participated in the Memphis Motorcycle Club, performing stunts and hill climbing events. He continued to ride until he broke his hip at age 92.
On vacations as a young man, he rode out West with friends on his motorcycle, many times for hours on end over unimproved and gravel roads. On a snowmobile trip in 1998 in Wyoming, he proved to his future grandson-in-law that he hadn’t lost his balance or love for speed.
He met his bride, Trevor Goodman, by giving her a motorcycle ride. They married in 1943, and Sara Jane was born in 1944. Until Janie was 5, they didn’t have a car. When the family needed to go somewhere, they all rode on the Harley or in the sidecar.
In 1947, he built a one-room log house on Highway 61 just south of Memphis. Trent Morgan “Buddy” joined the family in 1951.
Charlie Bob built a larger house without a mortgage by bringing home components “in paper sacks every Friday,” Janie said.
In 1964, he bought 80 acres of farmland near Arkabutla, Miss. and began building his retirement home. He did retire in 1974 and enjoyed four years of farming with Trevor before she died in a car crash in December 1978.
Charlie Bob always wanted to learn to fly, inspired in part by reading the news about Charles Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic. At about age 68, he got his pilot’s license and bought a canvas 1941 Taylorcraft airplane. He flew it for years before completely overhauling the canvas and applying new skin. His house smelled like fabric sealant for a good two years.
He began woodworking in high school and kept up the hobby his whole life. He built one of the first sailboats in Memphis area, then had to teach himself how to sail it. He built a cabin cruiser that was crushed by a falling tree, and then one winter a ski boat. In the spring, he had to tear down a wall to get the boat out of the house. The kids learned to ski behind that boat many weekends.
Happiest when working on a project, he also in his later years rebuilt a John Deere B Model tractor and a 1948 Harley-Davidson, calling it a “late-model” motor. A project that was left unfinished by his passing was refinishing his daughter’s 1923 baby grand Chickering piano.
Charlie Bob had a good sense of humor and liked to play cards with his friends, including Rook. He attended Stevenson Chapel Methodist Church in Memphis for decades, and more recently Hinds Chapel United Methodist Church in Horn Lake, Miss.
He loved music and got his first coronet in sixth grade. He played in the Rotary Club Boys’ Band and the concert band at Humes High School.
For the last few years, Charlie Bob had just two front teeth left. He recently lost one of them, and lamented about how that changed his embochure.
“Take it home with you,” he told his daughter from his hospital bed. “I can’t blow it with just one tooth. I was just getting to where I could get a good sound again.”
He was preceded in death by his parents, his wife and his sister, Rose Mary Hammond.
He is survived by son Trent “Buddy” Morgan Hammond, daughter Sara Jane Hammond Love, grandson Philip Hammond, granddaughters Audrey Hammond, Edie Love (Tamar Moten), Johanna Love (Scott Edwards), and Laura Jane Love-Scheuler, and six great-grandchildren.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Shriners Club.

PaPaw wasn't the only one to die that week; roaming wild dogs took down two of my niece Lily's pet chickens, and my sister's 15-year-old cat Arthur had to be euthanized. Some of us ran out of tears.

Of course, family tension was also a part of the trip. But out of three major rifts within my immediate family, two of them came closer to healing during the weekend after heartfelt – is that a polite way to say yelling? – conversations. Baby steps.

Jet-lagged and heading into the exhaustion of the final weeks of pregnancy, I needed to sleep most of this weekend to catch up and feel somewhat human again. But after finishing up freelance obligations tonight and finally having enough energy to shave my legs, I'm feeling almost decompressed at last.

Stuff

2008-10-14T13:39:00.003-06:00

Behold, the interior of my 1930s antique art deco bar. This was before packing it up to move. I gave away the four red wine glasses, but not much else.

I am amazed, after having a big yard sale and divesting of decor items and taking two huge boxes to book trader and trashing god only knows how many magazines and papers and stuff, how much stuff I still own. Clothes to fit a 50-pound range, coats for dressy and recreating, skis and bikes for every possible use plus some spare bike tires and studs and a trainer, art that's mostly by my dad so I can't get rid of it, and now, baby stuff.

We may need to have another yard sale AFTER we move into our new 847-square-foot 2-bedroom twinhome that we're renting for six months. And if it sells and we have to move again, I just don't want to re-move all this crap. Much less pay someone to store it for us.

I have never considered myself a pack rat, but now I'm starting to wonder. Am I sick? Is this normal? Am I just a typical American consumer? A fair amount of THE STUFF is related to entertaining, which I love. Wine glasses, serving bowls, platters, chip bowl, martini glasses.

Another volume of it is mentally labeled "sentimental." Wine and beer glasses etched with animals. Blah, but they were Christmas gifts from Scott's dad. A yoga "whale" that my sister loaned me, but she wants back because she got it from a friend who died in a car crash. My sister lives in Memphis, and shipping would be hell. A football signed by some dude who won the Heisman; Scott made friends with him when the quarterback was a guest at the place Scott worked. I'm afraid that ball is with us for life, even though it is half white and can't be thrown lest it get scuffed and the guy stunk in the NFL and probably sells used cars now.

Tag, you're it

2008-10-05T15:09:00.005-06:00

My friend Emilie tagged me with a fun little exercise of random info.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I know seven people with blogs to tag to!

But here goes:

1. I'm a little addicted to introspection and psychology. On Myers-Briggs, I'm an ENTP: Extrovert, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiving. My hubby is the complete opposite: ISFJ. On some sort of psychogeometrics, I'm a triangle-squiggle-square.

2. My dogs are Mojo and Java. Although I picked out Java and Scott picked out Mojo, the dogs sort of self-sorted into the opposite, Daddy's Girl and Mama's Boy. I love Mojo more, and I just can't help it. He just has more, well, mojo. Java just lies around all day. Everybody thinks they're Mocha and Java, like I'm a coffee nut. Just a little bit.

3. I've tried almost every sport, and although I'm not really stellar at most any of them, I like to participate: canoeing, diving, kayaking, swimming, water skiing, discus/shot put, downhill skiing, snowboarding, cross-country skiing, skate-skiing, hiking, cheerleading, kickboxing, boxing, mountain biking, road biking, baseball, softball, basketball, roller hockey, broomball, volleyball, etc. I also was high school mascot my senior year, a lion. Roar.

4. Lots of things on my figurative girl scout badge list. I can read a map, saddle a horse, fire a gun, change a flat tire, change oil, mix a mean cosmopolitan, format a resume, knit a sweater (although I only have patience for child-sized ones), bake, bait a trotline, wave an airplane in and park it on a flight line, back a trailer, drive a stick, set a formal table.

5. Things I'd like to do but haven't yet? Hunt and shoot an elk for the winter's food; finish my novel; design and build a house.

6. Pursuits I'm saving for retirement: Gardening, bird-watching, golf. OK, maybe I'll never get around to golf.

7. I blow deadlines consistently. But the final copy is usually great!

I tag the following people:

Dina
Rachel
Tee
Michael
Meg
Lauren

Camping in the fall

2008-09-23T22:08:00.004-06:00

It had been a couple of months since I went camping. Busy, busy with work, etc. But I towed Stella out of her storage slot and up to Jackson on Friday, and spent three peaceful nights at slot #17 in the Gros Ventre Campground in Grand Teton National Park. It's not posh – no electricity, shower or water – but it's beautiful, quiet and safe. For $18 per night, you get flush toilets, a picnic table and a fire ring, and the reassuring hum of dozens of nearby retirees, should any drama happen. I missed Scott, but he was happy to play some golf and get three nights of sleep without a snore machine next to him.

I did an interview on Friday, then towed Stella to the Gros Ventre. I took a leisurely tour of the campground, looking for the perfect site. I backed in, taking two goes at it to ensure optimal placement, then unhitched and cranked down her stabilizing jacks.

Back in town, I picked up a free changing table, snow suits and doorway bouncer from a friend, dallied in the grocery store where I encountered another friend, and her friend the psychic (JJ began kicking as the psychic communicated with Michelle's baby). Then a girls' night of turkey burgers and great company at Katy's house and I crashed back at the Airstream around midnight.

On rainy Saturday, I enjoyed eggs Bene and a Snickers latte at Shades before a massage, then headed out to the few yard sales that remained open after noon. I scored some designer baby outfits, a Gymini play gym, marble tissue box and a funky mirror by artist Randy Roberts from the salon where I got my hair done 9 years ago for my wedding. I headed back to the Airstream for a nap before driving to Melanie's for bathing and company before my late dinner reservation.

I had the enviable task of having to review a four-diamond restaurant. Ah, the life of a journalist. Margaret and I estimated our bill would have been $250 if the manager hadn't comped it. OK, the Southern-fried quail was pretty good, but the best part was a chocolate chocolate mousse, served in a martini glass with fresh fruit. Back to the Airstream and a solid night's sleep.

On Sunday, I worked for about six hours and then shopped for dinner. Back at the campground, I took the above photos and was extremely proud that I finally got the guts to try lighting the propane. It's been about 35 degrees each night, so the furnace would be nice. Even with the help of a sweet couple from Cache Valley, Utah, we couldn't get the furnace pilot to light, so I resigned myself to another cool evening.

I worked on my project of re-webbing a couple of aluminum chairs, and got one of them stripped and cleaned before Hetero Life Mate Melanie showed up at dusk with a poodle, rack of lamb, reading materials and roughly 30 pounds of firewood. As we piled more wood on the fire and cooked dinner, a nearby tent camper arrived home and headed straight to bed. Whoops. No way was he going to be able to sleep with all of our carrying on. About 90 minutes later, he got out of the tent and started his own fire. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, I guess. He stayed up until midnight, when we retired inside to watch the movie "Gossip" on my laptop.

True, it was sort of urban camping, the kind that I'm comfortable doing as I hit my third trimester of pregnancy. A friend asked if I wasn't nervous, camping alone for two nights. Nah. The first hint of trouble or a scream and I'm certain a half-dozen blue-hairs with baseball bats would have come running. And I think JJ needs fresh air, woodsmoke and sunsets.

Swell

2008-09-16T14:20:00.007-06:00

I just might have taken morning sickness instead, if the pregnancy gods had given me the choice between vomiting and swelling.

Cankles are bad enough, but I've been waking up in the middle of the night with numb, achy, swollen hands. It's pregnancy-induced edema, with the added bonus of pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel syndrome. But my blood pressure is great, so Dr. G doesn't think I need to worry about preeclampsia. Every morning, I smack my hands against my thighs, trying to regain feeling.

What to do? Exercise, of course, drink more water. "Typing is the worst thing you could be doing," Dr. G says. I guess that means that knitting is also verboten. Seeing as we're moving in about a month and I can't set up the nursery to "nest," knitting was the one thing I felt like I could do to feather JJ's nest. So I'm backing off the yarn.

But seeing that I can't just quit typing (he suggested voice-recognition software, which I don't see as a smart investment for 15 more weeks, and I can't dictate as well as I write...) the only cure is to lie down every couple of hours during my workday for 15-20 minutes. Great, I said. My bosses will love that. The only nearby place to lie down was in a conference room.

So on Thursday, my sweet coworkers Katy and Cory lifted the couch up and around several corners and partitions and moved it into the newsroom next to my desk. Cara helped clean out space for it, Scott brought in my laptop table from the Airstream, I took in a spare triangle-shaped wedgie pillow and voila! Add a laptop and cell phone and I've got a horizontal place to work, snack and stay involved in newsroom chatter while I help the fluid get away from the extremities and back to the middle.

Of course, I had to tack a sign above the couch that says "Doctor's orders: Don't hassle the puffy one."

Editor T came over the first time I laid down, of course, and said, "We gotta get a picture of this." Well, you do employ three full-time photographers and you have roughly 15 more weeks to get the shot. Knock yourself out.

Optimistic dreaming

2008-09-16T07:22:00.002-06:00

Last night, I dreamed that I had the easiest labor and delivery – the baby just sort of slid on out. She was, of course, beautiful and perfect and full of personality. She and I had no trouble with breastfeeding, and physically I felt just dandy, walking around like I hadn't just squeezed a watermelon through a garden hose. I think I even contemplated sitting on a bicycle seat later that day.

This sort of optimism comes easily to me during the day, but usually my dreams are the opposite, full of the fears that my conscious mind won't let me dwell on.

Yes, the dream did have a little negativity and drama. For some reason, Scott didn't attend the birth. When he walked by me, I was toting a little Moses basket full of French bread and the baby – perhaps because I've been carb-devouring lately? – he was with a bunch of his friends, but I smacked him and screamed at him that he wasn't invested.

That part of the dream might have been because Scott skipped my last OB appointment, when the seemingly teenage nurse couldn't find the heartbeat. She says to the OTHER nurse she's supposedly training "Oh, don't worry about it if you can't find the heartbeat. The doctor will come in and do it. Don't spend all day trying to find it." And I spent 35 anxiety-filled minutes waiting for Dr. G. to come in, certain I was hauling around a dead baby. I really wanted Scott there for emotional support, so I called him on the cell phone, freaking him out, too. He pledged to come next time, mainly because I scared him so much by telling him they couldn't find the heartbeat and then not calling him back for an hour.

But back to the optimism. Do any of you notice that your dreams are routinely pessimistic, worst-case scenarios? Or are you all glass-half-full-ers at night?

Talk to the belly

2008-08-31T20:33:00.005-06:00

The past couple of weeks have been a blur of busy-ness with work and a special section that finally went to bed today after 90 hours of extra work this summer.

Newspapers, I feel, are much like children, in that they drive you crazy and demand all the energy you have until finally they are put to bed (printed, for those unfamiliar with journalismspeak). Then you barely have enough time, it seems, to get a little sleep and feed yourself before the next issue needs attention.

So maybe I'm not as unprepared for motherhood as I think I am.

A coworker took one of these belly shot in the office last week, and a friend snapped the other photo, also about a week ago, at a fancy fundraiser for our art center. Willie Nelson played an awesome concert, and at the end of the night, I envied his New Balance sneakers as I in my cute silver shoes hobbled to the car.

I've been fighting off a sinus infection for weeks now, and yesterday began my new tactic of downing Mucinex until I snort and honk and cough up all the crud in my head and lungs. I know, TMI. I've been snoring so much, I often wake up alone – Scott has fled the bed.

My week has been further stressed by trying to figure out a workable maternity leave plan that I agreed I'd have by Sept. 1. To err on the side of caution about exhaustion, complications, etc., I wanted to take 12 weeks off from work, but couldn't figure out how to finance it. That's been Scott's major worry – how to get by without my income, even for a few months. So finally I came up with a plan to sell some things, (brand-new treadmill, anyone? Need a four-person bicycle surrey? How about kick-ass computer speakers? A bunk bed? Wine glass chandelier? Wireless dog fence?) cancel our fall vacation, save up freelance money and Christmas bonus and skip Christmas gifts for everyone but the baby.

Piece of cake, right?

Oh, and our insurance guy told me the delightful news that if JJ doesn't want to appear in 2008, it'll cost us another $1,000 deductible and 20 percent copay for 2009. Plus we lose the tax benefit. So if she doesn't want to come out by Christmas, the next week will be filled with spicy food, sex and other natural ways to induce labor.

JJ is a girl!

2008-08-17T22:37:00.003-06:00

Within a minute of waving the mouse thingy over my stomach, Dr. G. asked "Do you want to know the gender?"

Yes!

Apparently JJ was mooning us. So Dr. G pointed: "There's a leg, there's another leg. Now, boys look kind of like outdoor plumbing."

I craned my neck, looking for any signs of plumbing. Was I blind? Where was the plumbing he was talking about?

"And girls look more like a hamburger sign."

Huh? I obviously had not had enough X-rays in my lifetime to be able to tell what the heck was going on up there on the screen in ghostly black and white.

Scott spoke up: "Looks kind of like a hamburger sign."

"That's right. I think you've got yourself a girl."

We both wanted a girl. Daddy and Lizba, the most psychic peeps I know, both said it would be a girl, so I didn't worry too much, but it was a relief to know I didn't have to keep yard-saleing for gender-neutral items, and I wouldn't have to give away the cute girl clothes I bought just in case everybody was right.

Now I've spent hours pondering exactly what we need as far as baby gear, and I've got it mostly nailed down, I think, over at my registry.

I've been trying to acquire things on the cheap: A sweet acquaintance gave us a car seat; I bought a crib and swing at yard sales; some clothes at yard sales; a secondhand co-sleeper (attached-to-bed bassinet). A family member may give us a high chair. I'm looking for a changing table locally, because shipping that would be expensive and assembly tiresome.

The nursery theme? Circus. Why? Because we started trying to conceive JJ in the Airstream in the RV park at Circus Circus casino in Las Vegas.

Now I'm starting to worry about bringing a child into the world when the temperatures will be below freezing for three straight months; below zero for possibly weeks at a time. She'll need a cute puffy coat. After all, I have to spend that REI dividend on something.

We're hungry!

2008-07-25T14:00:00.003-06:00

Some of my regular readers have requested that I discuss food cravings. Not one to disappoint my small fan base, I of course will oblige.

I skipped that whole morning sickness thing. I have a cast-iron stomach. Lately, it's beginning to feel like I'm towing around a cast iron pot. We – yes, little JJ and I – are almost always hungry. But it has been for fairly particular things. Between weeks 8 and 13, say, the idea of a latte was gross. But I did want pasta. And Pad Thai or green curry. And of course, pickles. And ice cream. And cheese. And croissants. No-brainers. Now a latte tastes good again, but I'm definitely craving buttery things.

On my birthday, Cara made me mac and cheese. Deeeelish.

In Bozeman in early July, Scott and I went out to celebrate our anniversary. None of the entrees looked good, so I ordered appetizers: the crab sushi roll and brie en croute.

Two weeks ago, I made spaghetti and meatballs. I mixed Emeril's vodka sauce with a can of crushed tomatoes. The meatballs were a quarter sausage, three-quarters beef. Served atop angel hair pasta, the taste took me back to the teensy Italian restaurant I frequented in Greenville, Miss. The spaghetti there was so good, I don't believe I ever ordered anything else. Salad, green bean casserole.

Last week, I decided that I might make chicken cordon bleu for dinner. But en croute. I asked Cara for advice. She said I had better partially cook the chicken before wrapping it in croissant dough – "Don't give yourself salmonella!" Good plan. Cook, insert prosciutto and swiss, wrap in dough, bake until dough's done. It was awesome.

I've been fighting off a sinus infection by sleeping every available second of the weekend and drugging myself with Benadryl. Today I took another Benadryl at 6 a.m., which knocked me out until 11:30. Getting up, I made sausage egg and cheddar croissants and had a couple more with jelly. Mmmm.

It's just about time to get dressed and go for a walk to burn off a few of these calories. But what to make for dinner? Maybe red beans and rice. With cheese, of course.

Does anybody ever name a kid ...

2008-07-09T22:13:00.004-06:00

I got a letter from my dad tonight. He lives thousands of miles away, and the only way we connect is through the mail. He wrote me that he knew I was having a girl – that's not been confirmed yet scientifically – and that I should feel honored that this little soul has chosen me to be its mother, out of all the women in the world it could have picked. On the outside of the box that the letter came in, my dad quoted a few lines from this poem, which he has sent to me many times over the years, usually only when he sensed that I needed comfort and extra bucking up.

Which got me wondering... has anybody ever named their child Desiderata? I like Desi, but not Desiree. I promise to not make this blog all about baby names.

Desiderata, by Max Ehrmann

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself. Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let not this blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism. Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass. Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore, be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful.

Strive to be happy.

More name questions: Most people have first names that were on the Social Security Administration's "Top 100" or "Top 200" names for that year. Have you ever felt like your name was too common? Did you ever wish for a different name? Looking back on it now, have you grown into your name, or changed it?

I know I've gone through many incarnations, from Anna to Johanna to Jodi and back to Johanna with Jo being a favorite nickname. I would like my child to have that flexibility. Most of my sister's kids have nicknames that aren't names at all, just family pet names mostly based on mispronunciation by a sibling. My mom and great-aunt were dubbed Mousie and Ikey for similar filial reasons, and those stuck within the family.

Scott is super-sensitive to playground teasing. He wants a teasing-proof name. Delilah? "They'll call her Deli if she's chunky."

A kick in the pants

2008-06-27T23:55:00.002-06:00

I've spent two days now immersed in the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. What I hoped to get out of it was a kick in the pants to get going again on my novel, since I've procrastinated and not been writing on it for a few months.

And somehow, through seeing writerly friends and authors endorsed by Oprah, while sitting in on panels where some people asked fairly inane questions and writers, editors and agents still tried to give them the most thoughtful advice they could, it struck me.

I am miles ahead of the game. I have been working with an agent who wants to publish my novel. I just need to finish it.

"Just" being the key word with the minor annoyances of a 40-plus hour work week, a two-hour-per-day commute, being pregnant, trying to stay somewhat fit and married and fed ... but just 500 words per day would cruise me to the finish line in less than three months. Only half of my remaining pregnancy.

As the author of Life's Little Instruction Book said: "Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michaelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein." -H. Jackson Brown

Back to the conference for two more days of inspiring... and proffering my posterior for a much-needed kick in the pants.

Girls' annual bike trip

2008-06-13T11:50:00.003-06:00

You know, I've only gained 2.5 pounds so far of baby weight, but spandex certainly brings it out! I look, uh, more preggers than I am. Here's a pic of little JJ* on her first long ride, Cara's creative wardrobe choices and us by the campfire.

((JJ is a working title for the baby. Obviously, I would never be quite so narcissistic to name a child Johanna Junior, but I've gotta call it something, and we're hoping for a girl. A badass, tough little tomboy girl.))

This rain has been a morale kill. On Friday, I towed Stella down to the Malibu campground in Logan Canyon, and was so disappointed when I backed her into a slot full of black mud! We were there for the Little Red Riding Hood all-women's bike ride, 2,000+ women, and the weather has been great for the past couple of years.

Cara, Kelsey and I decided it would be more fun to shop in the rain than sit around a cold campsite, so off to Logan. Cara got a new helmet for $37 (! much cheaper than in JH), Kelsey got a $3 workout shirt from a thrift shop and I lusted after down jackets – "I'm so tired of being COLD" – but didn't get one.

Dinner at Firehouse pizza/pasta was fabulous, as was chatting with fun ladies from the Team Estrogen message board, and I was so touched to get baby gifts ... adorable books from my friend Sue in Salt Lake. I couldn't decide-- Duck on a Bike or The Juggling Pug -- they're both fantastic.

I headed out with Cara on the 45-mile route while Kelsey sprinted ahead for 102. Spent the first 10 miles answering Cara's questions about how to ride a road bike, etiquette, shifting, when to pass, etc. We were both appalled lots of women riding wide (and peeps stopped IN THE ROAD waiting for their friends) for the first 5-10 miles, but it got much better once we passed most of the wobbly ladies on mtn bikes. The hail hit us at about mile 5, and I kept telling myself it was only sleet. No waterproof layer. But I bailed and stood under a horse trailer for a minute anyway, worried it was going to get bigger.

My knickers were a good choice, but I wished I had located the pair with a better chamois. Long-sleeved jersey also stayed on and zipped all day, plus an undershirt. Windbreaker came off briefly.

Wow, being preggers, and not on the bike much I guess, makes you tired! I really think 45 is ALL I could have done. THe last 5 miles I was so whooped, I couldn't walk over to the last rest stop. I had to skip the fake champagne at the finish line, I just was sort of tired of the madness. We nabbed Wendy's, then back to the campsite for a nap!

Cara and Kelsey were so cold the night before the ride, they were dressed in long underwear, pajamas, hats and blankets... AND then they had to spoon to keep warm. Goal for this weekend's camping trip: Get up the guts to turn on the propane heat. I've been a little chicken of blowing myself up or poisoning myself. But for the first two months I owned the Airstream, I didn't even plug in the shell, because I was afraid of catching it on fire due to a short or something. I'm getting braver!

What's for dinner?

2008-06-01T18:31:00.002-06:00

You might think that with longer days and the "lazy" summer approaching, there's more time to cook and enjoy elaborate meals. Not at my house.

I've been working more than ever with special sections and a magazine to produce. I have been getting a little work done in the mornings on the drive when I carpool with Scott a couple days per week, but I inevitably hop in the truck or he calls me to schedule picking me up to: "What's for dinner?" I don't know! I'm too busy to pee enough, much less shop every day and plan a menu!

So I'm calling on my friends and fam in cyberspace: What do you make for dinner? I'd love two-word descriptions, full-on recipes or links. It needs to feed 2-4 people (Scott's nephew will be joining us for a couple months this summer, and I'm sure he will eat like a 17-year-old), be somewhat healthy and pretty fast to prepare. Things that can be prepared the day before are great.

I get into menu ruts. I cooked a lot over the winter, but it was winter food: white chicken chili, green coconut curry, lasagna. Now we have a fancy grill, and Scott likes to grill things, but ribeyes, plain chicken breasts and burgers get old.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Little stinker

2008-05-30T21:42:00.003-06:00

Left home all day on Thursday, Mojo was so bored that when we got back after Scott's softball game at 10 p.m., he streaked out the door and took off after a scent. Unfortunately, the scent wasn't going to stay just a trail in the woods. It was going to soak him.

After locating Mojo, Scott just yelled two words up the stairs: "Jo-- Shampoo!"

Shampoo didn't help much. Then we just had wet skunky dog.

Middle of the night, Mojo didn't understand when he wanted to hop in bed with us and I yelled at him to go back to the couch. He was pretty upset. This morning when I walked out into the living room, he just eyed me. Not even a hint of a wag. He got to come back to bed for a minute and get petted. Then I took him in the shower with me and gave him bath number two. Helped. A little.

I called our groomer, Julie of You Dirty Dog. She's booked out for three weeks. She told me what to buy: baking soda, peroxide, dish soap. Took Mojo to Rally's, where they have a self-service dog wash, and CJ helped me through the process. Soaked him for 10 minutes in the peroxide concoction and then lather rinse repeat... lather rinse repeat ... (singing my favorite song that Phoebe sang on "Friends") with Mane n Tail, then condition and leave-in conditioner. Apparently the old tomato juice fix is out of vogue.

Saddle Tramps

2008-05-24T19:27:00.005-06:00

My usual steed, Nugget, was rustled by his real owner, Bob, so I walked alongside in today's Old West Days parade, holding him at gunpoint. We were part of the Saddle Tramps, a group of loose women baring entirely too much flesh for the 40-degree temperatures.
I tossed out Jolly Ranchers to the kids lining the route and tried to come up with creative backstory.
"Ain't this the meanest cattle rustler you ever saw?"
"I'm gonna hang him high!"
Yanking on the rope: "That's what you get for messing with my sister!"
Then I went home and took a three-hour nap. Cleaning up the town can be exhausting.

Bring on the mocktails

2008-05-15T22:47:00.003-06:00

Clad in an ugly open-front flannel gown with my feet in the stirrups and a weird wand up my hooey, I got the first peek at the alien creature that's the reason for my clogged nasal passages and my bruised-feeling boobs. I had scheduled the appointment for 9 weeks, because they said 8 to 10 weeks and I figured why not split the difference. But on Tuesday, I had enough of the waiting and called to change it to 8 weeks instead. I really wanted to go for a horseback ride this weekend, but didn't feel good about riding if there were twins in there and they were already competing for resources.

Turns out there's only one bun in the oven. Much as I wanted to just get this gestating thing over with in one fell swoop, I was relieved to find that there's just one bean and it looks really good, for something the size of a small cashew. Scott and I saw the heartbeat blinking clickety-clack on the screen. I think seeing that really brought the pregnancy home for him. He no longer suspects that I am just making this up to gain preferential treatment: "Can you please bring me my shoes from the garage?" "I really need a scone this morning from the coffee shack. Low blood sugar, might faint." "YOU go to the couch next time! It's not my fault I'm snoring!"

And there in the darkened room with Scott and Dr. V looking on, I was suddenly transformed – from a greasy-faced Gen X-er resenting everyone for depriving me of much-needed Pinot Grigio – into someone new. A person pregnant with the possibility of new life, feeling suddenly very important for bearing such precious cargo.

So after I finished editing the last batch of magazine stories today, I went to a bar to bade farewell to a coworker. I had been avoiding drinking establishments so as to give temptation a wide berth, but armed with my new feeling of gestation gratification, I marched right up and ordered a mocktail: cranberry juice, orange juice, sour mix, 7up and a squeeze of lime. Shaken and served up in a martini glass, it looked downright festive, tasted delightful and gave me the much-needed fun girl vibe.

I wondered why on earth I had agonized over the decision of whether to become a mother, and waited so long to create this little life with the man I love. Of course I want to do this, and do it well.

Bring on the mocktails!

What happens in Vegas... in an Airstream...

2008-05-10T21:53:00.003-06:00

It all started with a traffic jam.

We had been enjoying a whirlwind week vacation, dragging Stella the Airstream around the southwest, when traffic flashed to a halt just north of Barstow, Calif. on I-15. I hopped back to the cooler and returned with cheese, crackers and wine, starting cocktail hour a bit early. "So," I said, "I've been meaning to discuss whether or not we're ever going to do that science experiment."

The experiment in question being one of biology, a sperm plus an egg to see what sort of big-boned, athletic, long-lashed progeny we might have. My eagle vision or Scott's childhood plagued with glasses? My terrible teeth or Scott's cavity-free mouth? What sport would it excel at? Would it prefer television or a book? Skiing or snowmobiling? When we met, 11-plus years ago, neither of us wanted children. Too many adventures of our own to have. And we married nine years ago when I was only 25 and Scott was 26. We spent almost a decade growing up, growing apart, getting back together, working our way through the power struggle phase of our relationship. Then the kid question switched to "Maybe" for each of us, but we were never ready: financially, emotionally, career-wise, no secure housing situation.

Within the past year, all of that has changed, and we're more ready than we ever have been. We bought a home, Scott started his own business, we moved into our own home. I got off the pill in November 2007 to let my body start getting back to normal, and of course I started taking vitamins "just in case." And at 33.75, I have been getting reminders from my gynecologist with every checkup: Now would be good.

So there in the truck, we decided to, as Scott puts it, "take out the goalie." I keep pretty good track of my periods, so I knew that I'd probably be ovulating within the next couple of days. We rolled into the Circus Circus RV park in Las Vegas, showered, dressed, ate some crappy pizza, played an hour's worth of blackjack and retired to the Airstream. Before he let loose, Scott asked me again if I was sure. Sure? I had been thinking about it nonstop for six hours. Sure.

Two weeks later, bada bing, bada boom. We tried to keep it a secret for all those reasons that people do; I only told my sister and best friend. Scott squealed to his brother, mother, aunt, and then asked me if I needed new softball cleats this year. Yup, he had momentarily forgotten that this eggo was preggo. So I decided I needed more emotional support. Five days after we found out, I squealed to my entire office. By last week, the news had made it all the way to Dallas and Scott's former boss.

The official line: What happens in Vegas doesn't always stay in Vegas. But how much cooler to be conceived in a shiny spaceship than in an icky hotel room?

I've been reading books nonstop. Fascinating things I've learned: Junior will leach the calcium from my bones if I don't eat enough for her. Hormones from non-organic milk are bad for a fetus. I shouldn't really be pumping my own gas. Caffeine has been linked to miscarriage. Bacteria from my mouth can harm the fetus.

Fascinating things I've decided to ignore: Hot tubs are not proven safe (I turned it down to 102 and am limiting exposure to 10 minutes max while chugging cold water). The microwave can be harmful (I turn it on and sprint for another room). Drugs of any kind are bad (without Albuterol and a Benadryl, I'm certain my sister's three cats would have caused me to stop breathing).

I've given up the wine, the caffeine, corn syrup, food coloring. I bought a Sonicare and have flossed nonstop since my last dental cleaning (gums really DO stop bleeding if you floss consistently). My nose has been running like a marathoner since I gave up Zyrtec.

Due date? Merry Christmas: Dec. 25. I hope all this is worth it!

Which one would be "historic-er"?

2008-04-29T06:45:00.003-06:00

I don't ever blog about politics... heck, I rarely discuss them. I much prefer the divisive subjects of religion, sex, racism and drugs. But this is hilarious. I guess I do assume that a lot of folks will align with the candidate they're most similar to, physically.

I found this via Cowgrrl Up!, which led me to Feministing. Okay, now I'm just showing off that I've learned to insert links. My brilliance astounds even me.

Recent adventures

2008-04-28T09:26:00.005-06:00

Last Friday, I took Mel and Bob's horsie Nugget for his, and my, first ride of the season. They were a little bit "barn sour," trying to turn around and go home at various points along the ride. It was nippy, but it felt good to get out and into the rhythm of riding. My new saddle's stirrups were too long, but we'll fix those before next time. After we pooped everybody out, we headed to the Blue Lion and enjoyed rack of lamb and girl bonding, not to mention banana cake with peanut butter frosting. Yum.

The Friday after that, we did a different kind of adventure: marathon power-shopping in Idaho Falls. We hit the antique barn, TJ Maxx, Urban Chic Boutique, Ross and Target with a break for sustenance at TGIFriday's. It's just the kind of experience you can't get in a mall-less resort town like Jackson. It was well worth the two-hour drive each way.

First road bike ride of the season yesterday with Cynthia Wiley. It was a new bike for her and a mellow ride for both of us, but the sunshine was pretty spectacular after such a long winter. There's gravel and dirt everywhere on the roads, and the snowbanks are slowly melting away. Birds are singing. What else can a girl ask for?

Grammarian graffiti

2008-04-09T12:47:00.002-06:00

Apparently, I have become one of those people your mother never warned you about, but should have.

A dangerous, ink-pen-toting graffiti grammarian.

Today at the Hard Drive Cafe, I noticed a sign advertising for someone to help with a lady's children. It said "Female Oupair needed." I noticed the same sign yesterday at Pearl Street Bagels, and no one had yet stepped to the lady's aid for her advertising accuracy, so I did. I scribbled out the Ou and added an Au space.

I proofread the books I read, newspapers, and obviously now have turned some sort of sinister corner, becoming an anonymous bulletin board censor. It's a sickness.

Winding our way home

2008-04-07T21:43:00.005-06:00

On the morning of April 1, walking the dogs around the gravel trail at the edge of the Grand Canyon RV Resort, I was inspired for an April Fool's prank. I could rush back into the Airstream, panic-struck. "Java ripped its' head off! A little yippy dog. Oh, the blood, oh, how disgusting!" Scott foiled my plan by being awake and outside the trailer when I returned. After a thorough 20-minute vaccuum session for me and an off-leash jaunt for the pups, we headed for coffee. Mojo snacked on Scott's seat belt while we were gone, prompting some filial tension.

We hit I-40, westbound, with the vague idea of camping outside of L.A. After studying the map, I decided we'd detour south through Lake Havasu City. My so-worth-it copy of DogFriendly.com's California and the West Dog Travel Guide led us to a dog park and the Javelina Cafe, where Mojo and Java were allowed to dine with us on the patio. Wooed by the blue waters, we decided to schedule a previous daydream to spend a week houseboating on Lake Havasu, Lake Mead or Lake Powell with best woman Mel and her hubby, Atlantic-savvy skipper Bob.

We drove west on California 62 through the desert along the north side of Joshua Tree National Park. We parked Stella in a slot at Jumbo Rocks Campground inside the park ($15) and headed to Twentynine Palms for awesome teriyaki takeout. We snuggled on the couch and almost finished watching American Gangster before passing out. As Stella's plumbing is not fully functional, we're dependent on facilities along the way, and the campground's pit toilet nearby was clean, but I had nightmares about encountering rattlesnakes.

Awakening early on April 2, we drove through the park (interestingly, nobody was manning fee-collecting booths at either entrance during our visit. They must be subsidized by larger parks like Jellystone.) to I-10. Lured by a creative sign announcing BREAKFAST, we ate in a tiny hotel cafe in Indio, Calif. and I snagged some nice mixing bowls for the camper a little further down the road at a Crate and Barrel outlet store. Huge fields of windmills near Palm Springs, intimidating semi traffic and tricky freeway navigation led us to Los Angeles, where we had already turned north on Highway 1 before discovering that Bolsa Chica State Park was full. We stayed instead at the Newport Dunes RV Park and enjoyed a nice walk around the marina. The dogs waded into the bay and got their first taste of salt water, which gave Mojo the zooms. He raced around like a maniac for a couple minutes until he raced right into the surf and almost fell down. This scared him enough that he ran away from us for a full five minutes – "Who the hell tripped me?" – and we had to leave the water before he calmed down.

Dinner was hot dogs, pizza and Cracker Jack at Dodger Stadium. It was a tight game vs. the San Francisco Giants, but it began raining in the second inning and by the start of the fifth, the game was delayed for almost two hours. Cold and wet, we headed back to camp and learned the next morning that San Francisco had won.

The dogs enjoyed Huntington Beach's special dog beach, although Mojo didn't go near the water again, and a "camped-out" Scott decreed that we should head back home. We got stuck in traffic for two hours between Barstow and Baker (deja vu) so I took advantage of the standstill moments to hustle back and forth to the cooler and Airstream, snagging cheese, crackers, pickles and wine for cocktail hour. The delay did allow us to see the lights of Las Vegas from the south, and we pulled into Circus Circus' KOA. The sea of pavement nevertheless appeared safe, well-lit and had averagely clean bathrooms. Winning at blackjack wasn't in the cards, but a good night's sleep was.

On April 4, we drove north, expecting to reach sunny St. George with plenty of time for bike rides and cooking before sunset. It was not to be. The "check engine" light came on a few miles south of there. We whiled away almost two hours in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart quick lube as they changed the oil, air filter and determined those things weren't the problem. An Auto Zone employee coupled a small computer to the truck and decided it was a fuel injector foul-up. Of course, it was 6 p.m. on Friday. We hustled to the cozy Temple View RV Park ($34) and unhooked so Scott could race over to the Dodge dealership. Of course, the mechanics had gone home but the salesmen hadn't. By mid-day on Saturday, he was convinced that fixing his beaten-down truck would be throwing good money after bad, and bought a new Dodge. This did not exactly fit with our strategy of enjoying a budget vacation, but it should last him for many years and will easily tow his work trailer and equipment.

We made it to Baker Dam Campground ($6) by mid-day on Saturday and enjoyed a leisurely cookout and sunset, toasting to our last night of vacation. Our drive home on Sunday was uneventful, but our spirits dropped along with the thermometer. It was below freezing again by the time we got home and parked Stella in the driveway. My grandiose plans for quickly scrubbing her down and organizing gave way to sleep, although we did at least clean her (mostly) out, wash dishes and start laundry.

Scott, a notoriously terrible sleeper, says he slept extremely well while on vacation. Perhaps because he had a bed to himself, the bed is a futon, fresh air, the Fantastic Fan, little worry about work or maybe he's falling in love with aluminum...

Choo choo

2008-04-07T20:07:00.004-06:00

Standing at the back of the train's platform, cuddling with a hot cup of coffee on a 45-degree morning, one could almost be transported back to a time when a lady would have been wearing a corset, skirt blowing in the wind.

But I was wearing hiking boots, shorts that felt corset-like after a long winter and a windbreaker in preparation for my first hike below the rim of the Grand Canyon.

Riding the train was one of the more luxurious adventures I've ever undertaken. At a price of $170 per person for the parlor-class caboose ride, two hours north and two hours back from Williams, Ariz., it was an indulgence. But wandering through the other less-classy cars, I wouldn't have done it any other way. Our attendant, Jack, was a born showman. "I've got good reasons for you to enjoy the cash bar at 9 a.m.: You're on vacation, You're not driving, You'll never see these people again." "The pastries, coffee, juice and beverages are all complimentary. What does that mean?" "Free!" "Or, you've already paid for it!"

The train first started ferrying passengers to the South Rim in 1901. In 1968, it shut down for 21 years before Max and Thelma Biegart brought it back to life. Last year, the train kept about 50,000 cars from crowding the canyon's edge. Concessionaire Xanterra, which also runs most of the facilities in Yellowstone, took over the operation last year.

The car swayed gently as our fellow passengers settled into leather easy chairs and got to know each other. A comedian from Boston worked the crowd with a card trick as his four cousins rolled their eyes; Texas native Joann, a former debutante, sipped cocktails and cracked jokes; new retirees Larry and Maureen from British Columbia talked about their 40-foot motorhome and how they entertain themselves on the road; a weathered troubador gave valuable advice to a headphone-wearing 17-year-old: "A guitar in a park is better than a puppy."

After two hours and 15 minutes, we disembarked at the Grand Canyon with three and a half hours of hiking time before we needed to board again. A banner winter across the West gave the canyon more snow than it had seen in 25 years, said a gift shop employee. On March 31, snow still covered the shady sections of Bright Angel Trail, making it a slower, more tenuous proposition than usual. Burro poo covered the snow. Braver people than I must be riding them. We inched down, sharing a pair of trekking poles. We passed a 9-year-old set of twins and I watched one of them drop a rock off the edge of the trail. Five minutes later, we were below that section of trail when a softball-sized rock landed 15 feet in front of us. Frightened and indignant, I screamed "Excuse me, children, there are PEOPLE down here!" No response. After 50 minutes of hiking down, we agreed to head up and hike the Rim Trail for the remainder of our time. I found the menace child and, after asking her mom's permission, gave her a talking-to. I don't think it stuck, but a rock-throwing incident on Gannett Peak in the Wind River Range killed a climber last year, and made me determined to try to straighten her out.

We saw California condors circling above the rim as we headed back to the train. I slipped into the well-appointed train bathroom to swap my boots for flip-flops and my hiking shirt for a dry sweatshirt. Jack served up Choo Choos: vodka, peach schnaaps, cranberry juice. Tired, sun- and wind-wearied, we relaxed in the train's climate-controlled womb, toasted with the complimentary champagne and giggled at the outlaws who robbed us of our spare change.

On the road...

2008-03-30T23:48:00.008-06:00

We're on the road in warmer parts. It was 3 degrees when we left home on Friday morning. By Friday evening near St. George, Utah, we were reveling in 67 degrees.
We spent a night in Snow Canyon State Park, where the RV sites were unfortunately about seven inches from each other. Okay, seven feet. We arrived just after dark and an hour or so before "quiet time," so we buzzed about trying to get everything organized. We assembled a fire pit that Scott's dad gave us for Christmas. First thing I did was lose one of the six nuts. The petroleum-soaked fire starter log said not to cook over it. Uhh huh. Of course we slapped the ribeyes on the fire pit anyway. They tasted fantastic, and we turned in early. Stella's new Fantastic Fan (in place of her old, broken air conditioner) worked superbly as white noise and a cooling aid.
The next day, we walked the dogs along the gravel West Canyon Trail and saw some huge birds circling over a cliff. Turkey vultures? California condors? More research is needed. They had a black T for a body and lighter feathers on the tips of their wings. Wingspan looked enormous, bigger than a bald eagle. Only comparison available were tiny cliff swallows.
Scott decided more privacy and dog freedom was in order, so we scouted a site on nearby BLM land that met all our requirements. Stella's new battery helped with lights and Fantastic Fan all night. I saw a cool hemisphere-like cactus when I went to dig a cat hole.

On Sunday, I road biked toward St. George while Scott broke camp. We drove through Vegas, where a fantastic rain storm skewed our planned hike and then across the Hoover Dam. We endured about an hour's delay for security/traffic, which we whiled away with many dam jokes about the dam dam tour, the dam dogs, the dam road, the dam tourists, etc.

Then south and east to Williams, Ariz., where we ate delicious Mexican food at Pancho McGillicuddy's and checked e-mail for the first time in three days.

Tomorrow, the train to the Grand Canyon. Choo choo!

Amazing dogs and the people who love them

2008-03-24T12:27:00.003-06:00

My editor sent me a link to a Texas Country Reporter story about an amazing cow dog named Skidboot. I took 10 minutes out of my busy Monday morning, and by the end of the segment I had tears in my eyes. Turns out Skidboot died in March 2007, but the cowboy now performs with "Friends of Skidboot."

OK, yes, I cry more than the average bear. But you can tell how much this dog really loves pleasing his human, and how much the cowboy – who reminds me, actually, of Scott Humphrey of the Bar J Wranglers – loves the dog. One of my favorite parts is how the dog was able to buy a couple of new trucks and makes way more money than the farrier.

It reminded me of a great dog book, Merle's Door, by Jackson Hole resident Ted Kerasote. I finished this book in June on the bathroom floor. I had to vacate the bed, turn on the fan in the bathroom and finish it there because my sobbing was annoying Scott. It's just a book. Jeez. Not since Where the Red Fern Grows had I cried that much over a book.

Dogs. They tug at the heart strings.

Oh, the places we'll go?

2008-03-18T17:45:00.005-06:00

It's T-minus 10 days until we leave on vacation (what does T-minus mean, anyway?) and I'm starting to daydream about where we'll go.

"God willing and the creek don't rise," RV mechanic Rich Lawrence will have Stella all spruced up by Saturday. She needs a new window (big surprise, another exploded when I took her to Idaho Falls last month), a few rivets, a new battery and converter. Then I've got a week to pack, fidget and take care of loose ends before we hit the open road.

Scott will tow the Airstream with his 2006 Dodge Ram quad cab 2500, plenty of room for two humans, two dogs and the copious amounts of lawn furniture. Our plan is to leave pretty early on Friday, March 28 and drive south. I hope we can make it all the way to Zion National Park's western gate, Springdale, UT, in one 600-mile push. We can spend two nights there and figure out which way to head. Mojo and Java may go to daycare for one day while we hike in Zion, but I'd prefer not to ditch them very much.

Southeast would take us to the Grand Canyon, then along Rt. 66 to New Mexico to explore Santa Fe and Taos. We could loop back north through Colorado on the way home.

Straight south lies the red rocks of Sedona, a Diamondbacks ballgame in Phoenix, saguaro cacti near Tucson, lots of sunshine and maybe even a trip past Bisbee over the border to Mexico.

Southwest? It's Death Valley, Joshua Tree, our pick of baseball games at four or five stadiums around LA, the beach, seafood, circling north along the coast and back up through Nevada.

We plan to be back home after about 12 nights. We'll be seeking out dog-friendly RV parks, hikes, beaches, outdoor restaurants, sunshine and funky sights. Does anyone have a "don't miss" place to picnic, spectacular sunset-watching venue, comedy club, aquarium, bike ride? Now taking suggestions...

The art of falling

2008-03-11T12:17:00.004-06:00

As the snowcoach rumbled south along the Yellowstone National Park road, Xanterra employees teased the Snow Lodge controller, Sena, taking bets on how many times she would fall down on the roller-coaster Spring Creek trail.

How many times did she fall on her previous attempt at that trail? "A lot." So I guessed three. The employees caught up with us as we cruised back from viewing Lonestar Geyser, and Sena had made it to the bottom of Spring Creek with just one fall.

I shouldn't have snickered; during three relatively easy cross-country ski trips while enjoying the last weekend of winter lodging in Yellowstone, I fell once on each trail. I went down on Old Faithful's icy boardwalk when stopped to remove skis for pavement crossing; I faceplanted on the rolly trail near Kepler Cascades and dug snow from behind my sunglasses; I became intimately acquainted with a tree well near Fern Cascades when stopped to remove caked-on spring snow from my ski. See above photo.

This made me ponder the art of falling. I'm pretty good at it. In hundreds of falls - while engaging in nearly a dozen sports - my only injury has been an ACL/MCL/meniscus knee trifecta. That's a pretty good percentage of carnage-free crashing.

In Yellowstone, signs urge skiers to fill in sitzmarks, that graceful German phrase for an awkward act. When we lost our balance, we joked, the evidence looked a bit more like the great gray owl plunge-holes that Bert Raynes recently discussed in his column.

From knocking the wind out of my lungs in a fall off the monkey bars to cartwheeling down Apres Vous and leaving a yard sale behind, falls are a routine part of adult life.

Some of the more spectacular falls in my past include Pete Rose-like slides while skijoring behind a snowmobile, the once-a-season endo (end-over-end) on my mountain bike, spinning like a top on my stomach muscles after falling on Rollerblades, and falling off a snowmobile while grabbing the throttle, crashing it into another sled. My most mortifying slow-motion crash, clipped into road bike pedals, has a happy ending: I didn't spill my cup of Starbucks.

New gear has been known to cause a fall, like the time a new backpack seemed fine while climbing up Cache Creek to the top of the Game Creek divide, only to ride unpleasantly against the helmet when starting down Game Creek's singletrack. Note to self: Come to a complete stop before adjusting backpack. It's pretty difficult to get dirt behind your sunglasses in a fall, but that was a grand crash.

It occurs to me that I invite falling. I open myself to the possibility, and the universe delivers. Take my Halloween costume this year: Hell on wheels. I made it up and down roughly eight sets of stairs that day in my roller skates and devil's costume before trying to pirouette around a toddler in the bar at Horse Creek Station and whoa-oh-whoa-BOOM.

Falling has been documented as early as the 124th century B.C., when Klutzan der Thal fell off his log after a few too many wooly mammoth ribs and fermented berry punch. The other cavemen laughed, and Thal decided that he should laugh at himself to preempt his buddies' howling.

Regardless of the circumstances, the steps involved in a fall's aftermath are straightforward.

First, perform a self check. A coworker does say "Check yoself before you wreck yoself," but somehow it always seems too late for that.

Second, laugh. This proves to passers-by that you are still breathing and not crying.

Third, provide the obligatory "I'm OK" to companions or strangers. Alternatively, use the phrase patented by two separate senior medical alert companies: "Help, I've fallen. ... and I can't get up."

Furry brain cells

2008-02-26T22:22:00.004-07:00

Oh, the shame. My sweet Mojo has performed rather dismally on the Pooch IQ test.
I'm doing a story series for the newspaper, pitting a drug dog against a working ranch dog, etc., and one of the dogs wasn't available, last-minute, for testing. So I gave Moj the test tonight and he scored about an 85 – not so bright.
Here are pix of him being smart on a backpacking trip last summer: he's sitting on my rain jacket after a swim, instead of lying on sharp rocks, and he's using my silk pajama-clad butt as a pillow inside the tent.

I guess the test was really treat-oriented, and very toy-centric. He isn't a big eater; he won't go near the kibble unless Scott and I are both home and he feels secure. And we never give him toys to play with, so he wasn't really sure what to do with them. I'm also blaming Scott because he wouldn't turn off "American Idol" long enough to perform the test in a quiet atmosphere, and Java (our pudgy older blockhead) kept interrupting. I think the test is biased toward food-obsessed dogs.

I think Mojo's special brand of intelligence is his emotional quotient, his EQ. He is so sensitive to our moods, knows just when to cuddle, what every little voice inflection means.

The only thing that's making me feel any better right now is that I got the test for free because we are writing stories based on it. At least I didn't blow $49.99 to find out my fur-child is thick. And I'm hoping he doesn't come in last place. I've still got six other dogs left to test.

Overwhelmed

2008-02-25T06:57:00.003-07:00

I haven't forgotten about you, dear blog. I'm just a little overwhelmed. Five days (and counting) past a deadline for two magazine pieces. Later than I'd like to admit on getting pages to my agent. I have a sniffle, a subject for a newspaper story bailed on me. And I'm an hour from work on icy roads.

Okay, maybe I'm being a little bit whiny. But I wanted you to know that I haven't forgotten you! I promise to post this weekend.

Cycling team name

2008-02-18T15:34:00.004-07:00

Some of you know that I trained for a double century race a few years ago, Logan to Jackson, aka LOTOJA. It's 206 miles on Sept. 2. I'm not feeling like I want to attempt that crazy training schedule again, but I am psyched to put together a relay team for the race.

My newspaper is "open to the idea" of sponsoring an all-women's team of employees, but what to call ourselves?

The Write Stuff
Roll the Presses
Road Hard and Put Away Wet (prolly hard to get our publisher on board for that one)
Press Pokes (see, we might be semi-slow AND we're loyal Wyomingites AND it gets the newspaper flair)
Saddle Tramps (no sponsor connection, just fun)
Chicks with slicks

or another brilliant name of your choosing ... Thanks for playing!

My favorite cycling forum is getting in on the act.

six pieces of trivia

2008-02-08T21:39:00.000-07:00

My friend Emilie "tagged" me on a little quiz. I don't know if I can figure out three people with blogs to link to, but here goes.

The rules:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.
2) Post the rules.
3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people.
5) Make sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting what you did.

So ... here I go:

1) I have a ton of hair. When I wash it, I have to plaster the handful of hair to the wall of the shower. I mean, if I let it go down the drain it would clog up the joint, right? I almost always throw away the large cluster. When I don't, Scott says "Cousin It is in the shower!"
2) Every time I leave my dog, I say the same things to him, in the same tone of voice so he won't get anxious. My friend Elizabeth taught me this. "You stay here and be such a good boy. I'll be right back. You stay here and be so good."
3) If I could, I would travel almost nonstop. I wouldn't mind trying to full-time in my Airstream for a year.
4) I have never broken a bone. Blown out MCL, meniscus, ACL while mountain biking; severely sprained an ankle sliding into third base; got seven stitches after breaking a margarita glass while bartending after a Jimmy Buffett concert, but no broken bones. I've got lots of padding and Neanderthal bones.
5) I am anti-mayonnaise, anti-ranch dressing and anti-cottage cheese. I don't eat anything with the smell, consistency or appearance of those things. I think it began as a kid and got worse during a waitressing job when I had to clean up the disgusting salad bar every night. Oh, and then reading the Vagistat box. Ewww.
6) My earliest memory is of almost drowning when I was about 3. We were in some sort of children's swimming class at Memphis State's pool, and I distinctly remember wondering what would happen if I raised my arms. Sure enough, I sank right out of the little white foam ring and plunged under water. Good thing my dad turned around and noticed that I wasn't in my ringy thingy. I have no idea how long I was under. It could have been just a couple of seconds.

I tag Lydia, lauren and Karin.

No chow for ... a lot of Mississippians

2008-02-02T01:38:00.000-07:00

OK, there's absolutely no way this is going to pass the Mississippi legislature. And if it did, I don't know how they would enforce it. But there would be a whole lotta angry, hungry Mississippians. Thirty percent of the state's adults are considered obese. Mayhaps they're the same 30 percent of the state's residents who haven't exercised in at least a month.

Just one of the reasons I moved.

Look at this.

This is the craziest thing I've seen in ... days.

I love deadlines ...

2008-02-01T18:11:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. I don't "love" the pressure gnawing at me every time I hit the pillow: I should really stay awake for another hour and get some writing done ... How many freelance assignments do I have outstanding? ... When can I sit down for two solid hours and crank out more pages on my novel?
But I do love the idea that producing expected copy in an expected time frame can really add up, over the course of three months, into finishing the novel I've been working on for more than 4 1/2 years.
An agent heard me read the first chapter last summer at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, and after reading a large chunk of it, she "really believes in" my book.
After ambling my way through another 10,000 words in six months, I called her for a pep talk. Boy, did she deliver.
And she also helped me come up with a better target range for my genre: 60,000 to 80,000. Which means I'm almost halfway, instead of the third-of-a-way I've been thinking.
I'm now going to write two pages per day (half of my previous goal, more manageable, methinks) and send them to her at the end of each week. And she wrote on her calendar "Johanna delivers full manuscript" on May 1.
And there's a new rule: No rewriting, which I've been using as a procrastination tool. Just finish it.
Now I have deadlines! Not just the "I made these up" deadlines, but "an agent is expecting my work" deadline. Crazy.

Privilege

2008-01-28T11:07:00.000-07:00

I went to a friend's baby shower on Saturday, and it was low-key and sweet, but many of the people who attended obviously grew up in a privileged environment. A little hat that I knit for the baby-to-come was the only handmade item given there. I wish I could have spent more than the $50 on gifts we gave, but the hat only took me a couple of hours and I hope it's appreciated for its warmth and thought more than the cost (free from my ginormous yarn stash).

Today I found this quiz. These are things that most people in my circle don't discuss day-to-day, but it's safe to assume my spendy resort town contains more trust funders per capita than most communities, and almost everyone I know had some parental help when financing college. That didn't happen for us; I think I was in 10th grade when my mother was admonishing me to practice the saxophone and told me that if I wanted to go to college, I had to figure out how to pay for it, and band scholarships were pretty easy to get. I was a pretty bad saxophonist, so I took the ACT three times until I scored high enough for a full academic scholarship. Although we didn't have money for lessons of any kind, we were smothered in books and art supplies. My fifth grade year was my only year in private school, because my mother worked there. I was so unhappy about being picked on for my hand-me-down and handmade clothes, I pretty much just stuck my nose in a book to escape those (future Junior League terrorist?) classmates.

The one thing I can say is that my parents did probably try to protect us from the knowledge that we were poor when I was younger. I didn't ever eat a steak until I turned 16 and started working at a Sizzler. I assumed it was normal to "stretch" a pound of ground beef for hamburgers or meat loaf by using bread crumbs and oatmeal.

Bold the true statements:
1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp. (State-supported gifted programs and Civil Air Patrol events.)
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

Pavlov's girl

2008-01-23T17:28:00.000-07:00

This is day three of my new eating plan (read: starvation diet), and I'm starting to feel a bit like I have some rare salivary gland condition. Every time I think of food, I start to drool like a St. Bernard. Shopping at the grocery store sets off my oral faucet. Reading magazines that include recipes, driving down the road and thinking about what's for dinner, watching restaurant commercials on TV.

Perhaps I have more saliva than normal; at the dentist they do have to slurp me out pretty often.

Sometimes Mojo will drool so much while he watches us eat that he stains the couch cushions.

I just think that I've been in a "feeding" phase, and haven't been actually hungry in so long that I didn't need to drool over food.

Bah, resolu-bug

2008-01-01T14:57:00.000-07:00

I am getting pretty sick of the "Year in Review" stories. I hope now that the calendar has flipped to a new year, they'll stop running these things, like the most inane one yet, "Best implosions of 2007" that CNN subjected me to last week. "We love to watch buildings go down," the anchor said. "In Germany, in Atlantic City, and of course, in Vegas. When buildings imploded, CNN was there."
Seriously, didn''t they have a better place to be? Like at the scene of an actual crime, a legislative committee or in the coffee shops interviewing those striking writers?
What are those writers doing now that they're not writing? Probably a lot of sleeping, reading, navel-gazing, surfing the Web, tippy tapping into their blogs.
Anyhoo, I celebrated this NYE with a half-can of champagne that came with its own cute sippy straw and was snoring by nine o'clock. I mean I was snoring, not the champagne. Where are those writers when you need them???
But back to my focus that you didn't know was the focus: resolutions.
Everyone wants to lose weight, be more adventurous, make more money, look better naked (I am really looking forward to trying to catch Carson Kressley's new show). It's only Jan. 1, and I'm pretty sick of year-end hype already.
The only resolution I can remember keeping, ever, was to use lip balm more often so I didn't have a scaly pucker. I keep it still.
So many failed resolutions ... one year I tried to give up chocolate and sex at the same time. The chocolate was making me break out in hives, and I was trying to work out whether I was confusing sex and love. I probably was, but there are worse things.
This year, I just want to be healthier. Of course, I could have decided in November to stop finishing a whole bottle of wine myself, to cut back on sugar or to spend an hour a day on the bike trainer, but there's nothing quite so inspiring as a clean slate, a whole different digit.
I vow to not let the digits on the scale determine my self-worth as much as the number of minutes I exercise each week. I pledge to get more sunshine but wear sunscreen. To say "I love you because" more often. To finish my novel before it finishes me.
Any views on resolutions? I'd love to hear yours ...

Advice to new Southerners

2007-12-28T11:53:00.000-07:00

This floated around the Internet years ago, and a friend requested its resurrection. More a hodgepodge than an essay, it's nevertheless full of fun advice.

If you are from the northern states and planning on visiting or moving to the South, there are a few things you should know that will help you adapt to the difference in lifestyles:
• If you run your car into a ditch, don't panic. Four men in a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a tow chain will be along shortly. Don't try to help them; just stay out of their way. This is what they live for.
• Don't be surprised to find movie rentals and bait in the same store. Don't buy food at this store. Remember, "y'all" is singular, "all y'all" is plural, and "all y'all's" is plural possessive.
• It's hot. It's humid. It rains. Those are the only three weather patterns we have here.
• No one eats healthy. Fried Batter is actually a menu item in some restaurants.
• Turn signals will give away your next move. A real Louisiana driver never uses them. Use of them in New Orleans may be illegal.
• Never get in the way of an older car that needs extensive bodywork. No insurance.
• Be advised that 'He needed killin' is a valid defense here.
• If you hear a Southerner exclaim, "Hey, y'all, watch this," you should stay out of the way. These are likely to be the last words he'll ever say.
• If there is the prediction of the slightest chance of even the smallest accumulation of snow, your presence is required at the local grocery store. It doesn't matter whether you need anything or not. You just have to go there.
• Do not be surprised to find that 10-year-olds own their own shotguns,they are proficient marksmen, and their Mammas taught them how to aim.
• Any insulting statement is fine, provided it is followed by "bless his/her heart." Example: "She's dumber than a door knob, bless her heart."
• If you do settle in the South and bear children, don't think we will accept them as Southerners. After all, if the cat had kittens in the oven, we wouldn't call them biscuits.

Southern sayings
"I'll slap you so hard, your clothes will be outtastyle."
"This'll jar your preserves."
"Cute as a sack full of puppies."
"If things get any better, I may have to hire someone to help me enjoy it."
"Gooder than grits."
"It's so dry, the trees are bribing the dogs."
"It's been hotter'n a goat's butt in a pepper patch."
Wintry roads are said to be "slicker than otter snot."
"He ran like his feet was on fire and his ass was catchin."
"He fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down."
"Uglier than a lard bucket full of armpits."
"The wheels still turning, but the hamster's dead."

Good tires, true alignment and Newton's first law

2007-12-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

REMEMBER...A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS SEVERE WINTER WEATHER CONDITIONS ARE IMMINENT OR HIGHLY LIKELY.
This from the National Weather Service reminds us that winter is finally here. The valley has been pretty dry until yesterday, when six inches hit our yard and forced Scott to bring home a snowplow to clear it. The storm continued today and tonight, dumping a foot in the valley and more in the mountains. This photo is from lunchtime, when I scooted out for soup.

Driving home tonight was intense. I was frazzled already after trying to do the work of two people in half the time because we're putting the paper to bed early so everyone can be off on Christmas day. Then I hit the wall of 1,000 other people trying to drive down the same two-lane road at the same time. Those without four-wheel-drive were cruising at a zippy 30 mph. I stayed behind a Grand Prix for about eight miles before the first passing lane. Everything except a two-tire track was full of packed snow layered on top of ice, so it was sketchy, but I managed to pass enough cars on each of the three passing lanes in the 22-mile canyon to average a respectable but still safe 47 mph.

The sound the tires make on black ice is a high keening. I turned off the iPod to listen for a bit. When the truck hit patches of packed snow or bumpy ice, the hum changed to a lower growl. Traveling along on a sheet of ice with just good tires, true alignment and Newton's first law of motion keeping me on the road. Although in two-wheel-drive it only averages 23 miles per gallon, and in four-wheel-drive it probably only gets 19, my Toyota is new and reliable and safe. The Tacoma has great steering and balance in the crappy weather. But I may stop by the store on the way back to town tomorrow and grab a bag of kitty litter for each rear tire well. And a snow shovel to dig myself out of whatever snow bank I or someone else ends up in. That would make me just about ready for winter.

This reminds me of the old "Advice to new Southerners," which included the gem: "If you run into the ditch, do not panic. Three men in a pickup truck will be along shortly with a chain. Do not try to help. They live for this." In Wyoming, practically every truck with much giddyup has a chain or a tow strap. If everyone relied on wreckers to get out of a snowbank, there would be about three more tow companies in town. Standard payment for a yank is a six-pack of good beer, or a case of domestic. Half of the people who have towed me out prefer domestic. Once, the guys trying to rescue me broke their tow strap, so I did have to call in professional help. But I still delivered the case of beer and a new tow strap to their office.

I finally pulled in the driveway tonight and ... yup, another eight inches had fallen. Hello, snow.

The world according to ... Americans!

2007-12-17T22:52:00.001-07:00

A coworker sent me this map today, which cracked me up. I searched the Web for a source, but couldn't find one, although a similar map (from 2003) can be seen at

http://www.jigsawlounge.co.uk/kungfu/world/world-usa2003.html

Someone really smart is going to have to show my Mac-tarded brain how to post an actual link.
Anyhoo, yes, we can be obtuse and egocentric and dumb, but are we this bad????

Christmas PR blitz

2007-12-11T11:12:00.000-07:00

This time of year, my work inbox fills up with zany Christmas gift ideas. Here are a few of this year's pearls:

Schwetty Balls bring more fun to your game, so leave your ordinary, plain golf balls at home. Schwetty Balls are the hottest and funniest balls in golf. It is a serious ball with a funny name sure to inspire laughter and fun on and off the course. Schwetty Balls make the perfect gift for any occasion, and are available in pairs or dozens. www.schwettyballs.com

DOES ANYONE ON YOUR HOLIDAY GIFT LIST
GO TO THE BATHROOM?
IF SO, THE BATHROOM READERS’ INSTITUTE OFFERS
HOLIDAY GIFT IDEAS FOR THOSE HARD TO SHOP FOR
BATHROOM USERS ON YOUR LIST WITH
Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader
Proving some things do get better with age, Uncle John’s Triumphant 20th Anniversary Bathroom Reader is flush with 600 pages of all-new material. The new edition is chock-full of all-time reader favorite subjects and chapters, such as fascinating origins of everyday things, forgotten history, dumb crooks, strange lawsuits, and more. Join Uncle John and the BRI in celebrating the 20th Anniversary of one of the longest-running, most popular humor collections in publishing history with its newest quirky collection of the most fascinating facts, the funniest stories, the greatest quotations, the most obscure trivia, and more.

Transform Your Toilet Lid In Seconds.
Uniquely Decorative Toilet Tattoos Make Bathrooms Flush With Beauty.
www.Toilet-Tattoos.com
It's a product that will add a creative new
decorating touch to bathrooms and restrooms worldwide. For
years, the only toilet decorating options were the dreaded
rug-like covers that Grandma used or the more permanent
decorative seat. But now a new patent pending concept in toilet
décor called Toilet Tattoos is aimed at satisfying today's
modern need for an easy, quick and changeable decorating
solution.

Poetry

2007-12-02T11:10:00.000-07:00

I fancied myself a poet at age 9. I remember writing a poem for my cousin Audrey's birthday. It had to do with a dancing bear, who retired to his lair. Yikes.

Once I figured out how wrong I was about my poetic skills, I rarely wrote poems. Billy Collins came to town this year, but I couldn't get into his work. Our library foundation is bringing Mary Oliver here in May, and she is this non-poet's favorite poet. Have you read "The Summer Day"?

To quote in part:

Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
...

Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Here's a link to the full poem.
http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/133.html

Therapyspeak

2007-11-20T21:01:00.001-07:00

Accountability. That's a fun word, isn't it?

Although I am not currently allocating much cash toward therapy, the first time I got my head shrunk on a consistent basis was because of my procrastination issue. Well, that and a few other things. I could list them ... but you see, that would be a procrastination technique.

I am on to myself's little tricks.

So Ms. Apparently Content With Her Life Therapist told me, way back when, that if our parents didn't do the perfect job of raising us – and bless their hearts I know they tried, but perfection doesn't exist – then it's up to us as adults to "reparent" ourselves. If my crazy artist father and introverted musician mother didn't foster discipline within me, I should work to encourage discipline within myself. Tools for change: bribing myself with presents, establishing routine, reciting positive affirmations, hiring a cheerleader, hiring someone to scream at me, public shame, peer pressure.

Since the other tools haven't worked to help me finish my novel, I am now resorting to the final two: public shame and peer pressure. Tangent: Her advice to writers? "If what you're trying isn't working, try something else." By posting my daily word tally on my blog, I can try two techniques with one click of the mouse. And if it doesn't work, you'd better believe I'll figure something else out. A glass of wine for every 300 words? Next week.

Since I've "lost" my digital camera (my leading theory is stolen), I'll be using alternative images for a little while. Until I bribe myself with a new camera after writing 5,000 words or so.

So if you need a little therapy but don't want to commit to emotional turmoil or can't afford $100/hour, just buy KnockKnock's Therapy Flash Cards, like I did. Educational but not pushy. Therapy on your own terms. I hope Ms. Content can still afford her car insurance since this innovation in therapy appeared.

(Forgive the snarky tone today ... I've obviously been reading too many e-mails from that Rocky dude at Steepandcheap.com (and don't blame me if you indulge in retail therapy after figuring out how cool that Web site is. Jeez. You need professional help!))

Losing it

2007-11-19T12:34:00.000-07:00

In the past two months, I've lost my checkbook, my keys, my digital camera. A bracelet, some fancy chopsticks, my winter "city" coat, a sock, a brand-new shirt that is actually flattering.
Part of this has to do with traveling so much: Memphis, Norfolk, China.
It also has to do with moving three times this summer and moving for the last time on Sept. 5.
But I can't help but feel like I'm losing my mind. Not knowing where things are is the worst feeling for a control freak, perfectionist, allegedly hyperorganized person. My things aren't neat, but on a normal day at least I have a pretty good idea of their whereabouts.
Convinced that the checkbook wasn't stolen but just misplaced, I used a sticky note as a check register for a month and bounced two checks that I wrote in the old book and not the new sticky note.
I went looking for the missing keys (post office box, gym locker key, gym admission tab UPC code thingy, work key) and didn't find them, but did find the checkbook in the gym bag. I semi-cleaned out my truck, which hasn't been cleaned out since August, and can't find the keys or the camera.
A friend just e-mailed me "Do you think I could get back that book that I lent you?"
Of course, I didn't read it and have absolutely no idea where it could be.
I'm pretty sure the camera was on my desk last week and now it is not. Stolen? That's my leading theory.
But since nobody would want my keys, they must be in my house somewhere. I would have taken them out of my bag because who needs post office and gym keys while in China?
My friend Bru says I should be praying to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost objects. Bru was introduced to him in the Bahamas when she lost a bunch of stuff on a boat, and after the lady sitting by the island's only telephone introduced her to St. Anthony, she found her stuff. In the harbor, wet, yes, but she found it.
So pray for me? I need to tell St. Anthony about my woes. Maybe he can help.

According to LuckyMojo.com, these incantations are used:

St. Anthony, St. Anthony
Please come down
Something is lost
And can't be found

Dear St. Anthony, I pray
Bring it back, without delay.

Something's lost and can't be found
Please, St. Anthony, look around.

Long-forgotten writing and girl excursions

2007-11-10T11:05:00.000-07:00

I'm fairly tickled when I am searching the World Wide Web for something entirely different and one of my stories pops up.

I was just searching for "The Missing Sock" laundromat to get a cute picture to go with a different post when I happened upon this, a section of the gossip column published in our paper. At that point, July 2006, I was filling in for Echo Taylor, who was too sick to keep writing. So I included a vignette of my own (I took this picture of my friend Melanie at the campsite that evening):

"People driving toward Jackson from the park or Kelly on Sunday evening might have noticed a homeless-looking girl biking toward the Gros Ventre Campground. I took the Airstream up into the park for its first camping excursion, and I believe it was the most venerated vehicle on Loop C. For neighbors, I inadverdently chose the nicest possible retirees, the vivacious and helpful Rich and Priscilla Elderkin, in town visiting their daughter, Jessica Johnson of Wilson. But back to looking homeless.
On Saturday, I scoured the yard sales looking for one more warm blanket to outfit the trailer. Nothing seemed right. Too old, too fragile, too dubious-looking. On Sunday, I was biking “home” to the campground with a messenger bag full of groceries and a Whole Grocer bag o’ burger buns tied on the back of that to avoid squashage. Just past the park entrance sign, I saw a beautiful bright blanket on the side of the road. I wobbled to a halt and checked it out. Looked like someone’s grandma had hand-made this fleece blanket with a cheery cherry print. Impossible to return? Maybe. But how to rescue it? I rolled it up and stuffed it behind my bag and continued on my way.
Except for the expensive Italian leather bike shoes, impossible to discern from a moving vehicle, I looked homeless: blanket, bags hanging from bags, riding my bike. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve been close. But just to set the record straight, I was clearing debris and recycling.
So if anyone is missing a special fleece blanket, I would be willing to return it in exchange for a good story. If not, it will visit The Missing Sock and then find a home in my Airstream."

I love a good girl excursion.

Feeling smart?

2007-11-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

Then go to www.freerice.com and check out your vocabulary score.
It's the most fantastic time-waster I've enjoyed in quite some time, and as a writer, I can even call it research, edification, nay, work.
I humbly report that I ended on the high note of 41 after donating about 1,000 grains of rice so the United Nations can give it to hungry people. That should feed a small child one meal. And I was frankly tired of cursing the computer.
Enjoy!

Totem critters

2007-11-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

When I was 19, which seems like a lifetime ago, but it really wasn't, I got a tattoo of a duck. To be specific, a rubber duck, like Ernie enjoyed in the tub. Made sense to me. I liked baths. I was resilient. And on the surface, impervious to drowning despite being figuratively dunked over and over. I kept popping right back up, painted-on smile intact. And like the ducky, who "made bathtime so much fun," I was firmly rooted as a hedonist. So some people, including family members, decided that I had chosen the duck as a totem animal, and besieged me with ducks.
I at one point have had a rubber ducky bath curtain, curtain rings, Peabody Hotel schwag, a couple of rugs, a toilet seat cover, back massager, soap dish, trash can, figurines, fruit bowl, etc. etc.
Finally I had to gently say to the fam, "Enough with the ducks." "Maybe my duck phase is over."

Further research has led me to animaltotem.com:

"You can have several animal guides through out your life. Sometimes an animal guide will come into your life for a short period of time, and then be replaced by another depending on the journey or direction you are headed toward. Your guide will instruct and protect you as you learn how to navigate through your spiritual and physical life. When you find an animal that speaks strongly to you or feel you must draw more deeply into your life, you might fill your environment with images of the animal to let the animal know it's welcome in your space. Animal guides can help you get back to your Earthly roots, and reconnect with nature by reminding you that we are all interconnected. To first do this you need to know what your Animal Totem is."

Let's see, over the course of my life I have been fascinated by: koala, ferret, otter, eagle, squirrel, duck, turtle, bear, horse, dog.

Of course, I also rewatched "Legends of the Fall" the other night, and grizzlies and my fear/obsession with them is at the front of my brain.

But perhaps there are other totem animals better suited to me.
While I was in China, I visited the Qiao Family Mansion. In it was a mirror on a carved wooden rhinoceros. According to legend, the rhino used to be a general. He did something bad and was reincarnated as a rhino: big, ungainly, powerful, perhaps a little oblivious to the needs of others.
So I proceeded around a few folks in the group, asking what they would probably come back as.
I guessed that maybe I would be a squirrel. Shortish, likes trees, chattering a lot while going about the very important work of preparing for winter: hiding nuts, getting fat, etc.
But I found out that I was born in the year of the Tiger. Hmm, never really gave tigers much of a thought. Then I bought that Tea Tiger thermos, and part of the $21 I spent on it is supposedly going to help save tigers in India. Neat.
While in China, I was fascinated with the lions, stationed at the entrance to each holy site.
According to http://www.sayahda.com, the lion "holds a variety of energies and is never what it appears to be." It also says "Lions are often spotted lying around, not doing much of anything at all, busy relaxing." Excellent plan.
According to Mr. Tian, one of our translator/guides, in Chinese custom, there are usually one male, one female lion guarding a gate. Often they have different expressions, things between their paws. Like playthings, strings of coins, balls. "These lions, they are always playing with the balls," Mr. Tian said. "I do not know why. They are a luck animal, a fiery animal."
So I had my photo taken with several, several of the lions, and I brought some lion figurines home.
Never know when you're going to need some luck. Or fire. Or a ball-playing standin.

No wonder it cost 90 yuan

2007-11-06T10:17:00.000-07:00

So this morning I dropped a ball of green tea into my Tea Tiger thermos, which is a cool invention in itself: a Lexan double-walled thermos with a built-in strainer in the lid so drinking loose tea is possible without chunks flying into your mouth.
I bought the Tea Tiger at Pearl Street Bagels here in Jackson, but the loose tea I got in China.
Whilst driving down the highway at 70 mph, I pick up my thermos for a drink and notice something strange: the ball of tea is morphing into a ginormous flower.
An internet search reveals that this is a "Chinese tea flower," but since I bought it in the airport and all of the carton inscription is in Chinese, buying more of this seems almost impossible until I get to a Chinese market in a big city.
So the carton cost 90 yuan, about $12, and there might be eight of these balls inside, which means each one cost about $1.50, but that's the best show I've seen in a long time for a $1.50 beverage.
And in China, nobody served us any tea this fancy, although there was a "Tea Master" lady who poured with a four-foot spout from over your shoulder and never spilled a drop.

Of squat toilets, Buddhist lore, funky smells

2007-10-30T19:22:00.000-06:00

From the moment we met him, most of our Wyoming delegation dubbed Ruijiang Zhao the "Happy Buddha."
Always grinning, giggling or gesturing, Zhao did everything with gusto.
The vice-director of the marketing section in the Shanxi Provincial Tourism Administration, Zhao was one of four Chinese hosts who spent a whole week with the 18 members of our group, guiding us around their province of the People's Republic of China. He gave us chopstick lessons, encouraged us to gam bei our wine - empty the glass - and played charades to communicate when translators were busy.
At Shu Xiang Temple, Zhao even introduced us to his "close personal friend," a 78-year-old Buddhist monk named Sheng Zhong. The monk normally only allows photographs with famous people, but submitted to a lengthy snapshot session for Zhao's Wyoming guests.
The trip, organized by the Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs, was a 10-day goodwill mission to the north-central Shanxi Province to consider how a tourism exchange could be mutually beneficial. This was the sixth in a series of visits between Shanxi and Jackson Hole residents that began in November 2004.
As our luxury bus rolled through countryside from Shanxi's capital city, Taiyuan, to the small mountain town at the base of Mt. Wutai Shan, Taihuai, the sunny day's visibility was limited to just a mile or so due to pollution. Our hosts pointed out coal-fired electricity plants with pride, but acknowledged that they are causing degraded air quality and pollution is their main challenge.
A dog wandered directly into our lane of travel, and I let out an involuntary squeal. Our driver slammed on the brakes. I wondered aloud if I hadn't vocalized my distress if our bus would have even slowed.
We passed men wielding straw brooms on the roadsides. The street sweepers demonstrated just how cheap labor is in the world's most populous nation, with 1.3 billion pairs of hands at its disposal.
As we traveled near Wutai Mountain, Jackson Hole residents had visions for the future of tourism there.
"I see ski lifts," quipped Derek Goodson, CFO of Spring Creek Resort, looking at well-sloped hillsides.
"This is a place that desperately needs an airport," said Mike Gireau, director of Jackson Hole Air. If there were an airport near Mt. Wutai, visitors would be spared the bumpy 150-mile bus ride from Taiyuan.
In the Beijing airport, at roadside pit stops and in some of the hotels, we were introduced to the Asian squat toilet. They varied greatly in sophistication, from a rectangular hole that drained outside onto the ground without any plumbing to fancy auto-flush style. At first we cursed them and a couple of us wet our jeans. But by the end of our visit, we were pondering how not sitting on a toilet seat might be more sanitary, and the squatting posture could be more conducive to bountiful bowel movements.
On Oct. 21 at a Han Buddhist women's monastery called Pu Shou Si, Taiwan-born translator Ruth Pin-Chi Shi led us into their worship hall and asked us to "find your place" at a cushion. She then taught the group the proper sequence of a kowtow, kneeling and touching the forehead to the ground to show respect for Buddha.
Many of our group discussed how spiritual the shrines made us feel, as if we were finding our bearings in the world.
We wandered among dozens of temples in incense-scented air. There are about 90 temples today in the central cluster near Taihuai; in its most popular era of the Tang Dynasty, 1100-1400 years ago, there were about 300.
At Longquan Temple, we walked up 108 steps that represent 108 difficulties a Buddhist will face in his lifetime. A white carved marble dagoba featured the monk Puji on four sides. According to Buddhist lore, Puji claimed to be the incarnation of Laughing Buddha, but we all were secretly comparing him to Zhou.
"Happiness makes people live longer," said Tian Xizhao, the deputy director general of the foreign affairs committee of Shanxi Provincial Tourism Administration and arguably our most knowledgeable guide.
On Oct. 24, we traveled to the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, which at 950 years old is perhaps the oldest intact wooden structure of its size in the world. At lunch that day near the pagoda, we marveled at the precision of a tea master who wielded a kettle with four-foot-long spout. She aimed it at each cup without spilling a drop.
Chefs carved elaborate vegetable sculptures to decorate the banquet tables: a fish, cobra, sandhill crane. One of our group members suggested that Derek Goodson send his Granary chefs to China to learn those skills, but at Jackson labor prices, Goodson said each crane could cost $50.
On Thursday, the chefs' noodle-making demonstration at Datong Hotel ranked "high on the cool-ometer," Goodson said. One man whipped and twisted dough into vermicelli-sized strands at a frenetic pace, while another sliced at a dough ball with a brisk knife, each sliver landing in boiling water. Noodles are the province's signature food, always served with a small dish of vinegar. They were served next to braised sea cucumbers, pumpkin dumplings stuffed with sweet bean paste, sauteed lotus roots, among other items that by turns delighted and frightened us.
We were chaffered to the Hanging Temple, perched on a cliffside above the Hunhe River. It was built 1,400 years ago during the Northern Wei dynasty. Even the most daring of our delegation flirted with acrophobia while clambering through its narrow stairwells to peer at statues devoted to Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.
Outside each temple, vendors pushed their wares: prayer beads, toys, jade charms, scrolls, postcards, brass Buddhas and other bric-a-brac. Outside the Hanging Temple, several people tried to sell me a necklace-strung fake Omega clock with the inscription "Made in Swit Zerland." We bought dozens of souvenirs, bargaining their prices down, but most of us felt badly about pushing them too far; this is their livelihood.
At the 1,500-year-old Yungang Grottoes, thousands of religious figures and decorations were carved into the cliffs in just 70 years. Cody resident Jeanne Bryant was awed.
"Every day you think it just couldn't get any more spectacular," Bryant said.
After days of witnessing exotic sights, funky smells and strange tastes, our senses were exhausted.
"Just keep taking pictures," said Olivia Meigs, director of communications for the Jackson Hole Center for Global Affairs. "You can process it later."
In the ancient walled city of Pingyao, we toured a centuries-old bank and a courthouse that contained torture instruments.
Everywhere we went, the Chinese people were helpful and ready to return smiles.
We pondered the contrasts in an old country gathering steam in its industrial revolution, hoping to develop a thriving tourism industry but hampered by pollution.
"I'm truly touched by the dichotomy of what you see going on," said Jim Auge, president of the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce. "You can just feel the energy and people wanting more."
Throughout the tourist destinations, signs translated to English were often a bit garbled.
We giggled at the "Safty first" message at the Hanging Temple and the "Wish you have a good journey and a good luck in the Buddhism holy land" at Pusa Ding Temple. For those of us only accustomed to English or Romance languages, Mandarin Chinese seemed impossible to comprehend and the signs were easily understood, albeit humorous.
A sidewalk sweeper at Tayuan Temple said "Ho" to this reporter three times before it became apparent that he was trying to politely greet, not insult me. At least he was trying; after a week, the greeting and farewell nee haio and the grateful shi shi was all most of the Wyoming delegation had mastered.
Our Chinese friends showered us with gifts: maps, books, a framed image of Mt. Wutai, a jade bracelet featuring a mythical animal, probably a bixie, that we dubbed "fairy pig" after failing to understand what its name was. We gave gifts as well: metal cowboy silhouettes, books about Wyoming, Jackson Hole caps.
At each elaborate banquet, and often at lunch, hosts poured small servings of red wine and a shot glass full of corn liquor. Our Chinese hosts made multiple toasts to their visitors from afar. Once we asked Zhao why we were drinking so much, and why we had to gam bei the entire glass at that.
"In China, people gam bei to show their friendliness and excitement," Zhao replied through a translator. Since it didn't seem acceptable to sip our wine at all, we Americans caught on and began toasting each other for inane reasons.
"To the mountains," "to Scotland," "to the free press," "to buying gifts for family members who don't have passports." We even introduced our Chinese friends to new drinking phrases: "Cheers," "Salud," "Let 'er buck."
At our final banquet on Saturday, Zhao mimicked an elk he had seen on his trip to Jackson Hole, and we promised to take him on horseback rides if he would return to see us.
By then, leaders on both sides had hammered out a memorandum of understanding on promoting tourism between Wyoming and Shanxi (see story in next week's News&Guide). Our group members felt that we had completed the trip of a lifetime, and hope that the other Wyoming residents will soon be able to easily do the same.