cookiemania

yesterday, i went over to a coworkers sibling's house to make christmas cookies. i brought my baking-genius sister along for the ride. we fired up the kitchen-aid mixers and began cutting and baking our brains out. i'm not sure how many cookies we made, but i brought home about 3 dozen cookies, including sugar cookies, gingersnaps, raspberry lemon thumbprint cookies, pistachio cookies, some cookies with chocolate chips, almonds, and raisins. it was a hoot.

towards the end, some of the family started playing rock band, which we all joined in one way or another. we were there from 12:30pm until 7. then my sister and i did something really dumb... we went to ikea.

ok, after standing on your feet for almost 7 hours baking and eating sugar, it's not a good idea to go shopping at the mecca of all shopping places the weekend after thanksgiving. although i have to say, at 8pm on a saturday night it wasn't that busy. but man, i was totally wiped. i grabbed some glasses, a soap dish and some batteries and we got out of there. the traffic on the way home was as blissful as it was on the way out. why can't the kennedy always be that awesome?

after i get off my cookie-bloated butt, i'll load some pics of the event.

i hope you all had a great thanksgiving. and hopefully none of you got trampled at wal-mart over the weekend.

you aren't going to like me

i have been reading something about food allergies. like food labels, that don't have to tell you what "allergens" are in them, are being labeled improperly. that one kid suffered an allergic reaction when she ate some chocolate from whole foods because it had milk in it when it wasn't supposed to.

one kid. a reaction. she didn't die. and the chicago tribune is all over it. whole foods had to issue a "food recall." wtf is that?

remember in the good old days, when companies had accountants to crunch numbers about recall and if the amount spent on the recall was more than the damage the unrecalled thing would create, then they didn't do one (fight club wasn't lying). so if a kid who had some pussy-assed allergy ate a fucking chocolate bar and dropped dead from whatever the hell was in it, it wasn't worth a recall.

one. lousy. kid.

and remember the good old days, when anyone who had allergies that severe either had to be a nazi about what s/he ate or they died? there was no whole foods, there was no gluten-free anything. you either didn't eat chocolate or you suffered the consequences.

now darwin has been made into a liar with all the bleeding heart breeders out there whose children, for the most part, shouldn't be alive passed the age of 3 months. "my child is allergic to everything!" then God is trying to tell you something.

i wonder what PETA has to say about gluten allergies? is there a evolutionary reason that there are a growing number of people who can't eat good old ordinary bread? so they have been fine-tuned to eat meat! good for them!

i'm tired of two things. 1. weak people (kids) who are being raised by weak parents who will sue at the drop of a hat if their child has to suffer for more than a millisecond. 2. the fact that doctors are taking away any hope for a reduced population. 100 years ago, these kids just died. and you know what? people didn't sue. they chalked it up to God and their poor luck. then they went and had more kids that may not make their lives so goddamned miserable. can you imagine having a kid who was allergic to every damn thing? i'm reading these books about autism and really? i would probably just call DCFS.

in recent years, it's been "cool" to give your lives over to your kids and do anything in the world possible to make them happy. again, let me go back to the good old days when the phrase "seen and not heard" was very common. kids didn't talk at the dinner table. they didn't yell at their parents. parents just made sure their kids were fed, clothed, and maybe educated. they weren't there to be their "friends" or to be their entertainment committee. they had chores and they did REAL WORK. homework doesn't count as "real work." they got spanked (i'm not an advocate of the belt) and parents didn't care if their kids got mad at them. that was life. life was rough. better you learn this now than when you have to do REAL WORK for a REAL BOSS.

but these days, kids have no boundaries. they pull away from their parents, run into the street, and the parents only say, "don't do that again (weakly)." bah. it makes me sick to my ass. in this book i'm reading, this mother has this autistic kid who is super-sensitive to everything. he's like 9 months old. the therapist who comes to her house says, "you shouldn't take him out of the house if you can help it. if he zones out while he's over-stimulated, then he's not learning." so this woman was basically chained to her house because this therapist expected this kid to be learning something every waking second of the day. who has that kind of time? evidently the mother of an autistic baby. and she refused to leave the house with him, for fear he might be learning something. jesus christ. he's 9 months old. groceries must be got.

i refuse to believe she's a better person than me because she'd sacrifice every fucking thing for one child. that isn't parenting. that's obsession. and it's a running theme through these books about autism. the mother drops every thing to spend the husband's money on expensive therapy and the like. and then they get divorced because the husband didn't want to sign on for this shit.

since when are mothers expected to be mother teresas? when did this over-endulgence happen? this is why i can't be a mom. i would be telling all these dumb-ass supermoms to go shove it in their pie-holes. raising a real kid takes hard work and something else that seems to be lacking... discipline. "well, he just cries when i put him in his car seat." the words "tough shit" come to mind. put some damn earplugs in and suck it up. that's what hospitals should hand out after labor... earplugs. "well, she cries 17 times during the night." and she's 2? earplugs.

you can love them, but you don't have to be "in love" with them. i think this needs to be advertised more.

it's been a while

i'm doing much better. we are officially getting our roof fixed, to the tune of $30,000. it should start december 1. yippee!! i have to say, once we get the roof fixed, this place won't be half-bad. i rearranged the bedroom and now we have full access to our wall of windows (the bed used to be up against them) and you can see the park across the street. it's very nice, even when it's only 22 degrees outside. brrrr.

other than that, nothing much is going on. i've been reading a lot about autism lately. it started with a free book i got at work about a woman whose son is diagnosed and she and her husband spend an extremely large amount of money to treat him, including a special diet and behavior modification therapists 40 hours a week. the results are amazing. really. she also touched on the vaccine issue a bit, so i checked jenny mccarthy's book out of the library to see what she had to say. not too bad. not as preachy as i thought it was going to be. and never does she say you SHOULDN'T vaccinate your children, she says you should be more cautious every time you vaccinate your children. then i read another book that stated pretty much the same thing. i found out that doctors want you to vaccinate your children early because HMOs usually only cover well-child care for the first 2 years. that seems like a pretty stupid reason to cram your young children full of vaccines, but that's just me. for the most part, many kids remain unscathed. but it's those pesky 1 out of 125 that are ruining it for the rest of us. damn them.

i read another story about a family that has three autistic girls. ok, i'm not a parent, but if that ever happened to me, there would be several bundles on the doorstep of the local orphanage. not only could i not handle three kids who couldn't control themselves, but the treatment could run upwards of $!00,000! do you pick just one to treat if you don't have enough money? maybe you can get a group discount? and the thing that sucks about autism is that you really don't know about it until your kid is about 2 or 3. when that language thing starts popping up. this is one of the many reasons i am not going to become a parent.

alright, enough of that. i am going to go read in bed. i've got myself a chick lit book about a dead kid whose heart give another kid life. a real pick-me-up. good night.

ennui

i have not been excited by anything in a long time. oh, sure, i get excited when we have pizza or if we order from essence of india or if there's a law and order marathon on, but in the grander scheme of life, i am a complete blank. i dropped the one class that made me feel like i was working towards something... whatever that is i don't know. i thought maybe i could use my extra time to do something with my art background, you know, be more creative. but i dropped my class and here i am... doing nothing. i sit on the couch and read blogs or books, watch TV or play solitaire, being unable to shake that feeling that i should be doing something "better" with my life. here are my three path options:

1. stay at this job, which doesn't derive me one iota of satisfaction. i have no authority, no power, no say in anything. there isn't anything i know that someone else also knows. i am not special in anyway. i drag myself to work every day, struggle to do my work and then drag myself home. i like the people i work with, i like most of the work. i can't quite figure out what i don't like about being here other than the stuff mentioned before.

2. i can break away from the steady paycheck and go into business for myself. this would require:
a. a complete overhaul of my laptop, which currently runs at a snails pace when you have more than one adobe program open at once. this will no do. we also don't have enough room for me to have a desktop. isn't that pathetic?
b. me to purchase $1700 worth of adobe programs OR figure out how to use the Intel side of my laptop processor, which i'm sure won't make it run any slower than it already does.
c. procuring clients. oh, i have lists of people i could contact. but i'm scared. and i feel like i really have nothing to offer them. not that i didn't freelance for 9 months in 2006, but it was really just for one client and me working at other peoples office's. not that getting up at 9am was a bad thing, but really defeats the purpose of being self-employed.

3. continue on my medical path and do... what, exactly? the older i get, the more scared i am of the unknown. what happens if i get this degree in (insert medical degree here) and it turns out i'm just as useless at that job as i was at design? what if my attitude fits in just as poorly in the medical community as it does in publishing? what if i never get promoted, just like in publishing? i guess if i get paid more, than i'd be fine with it. if i found some satisfaction in my work then i probably wouldn't care all that much. but this would require:
a. me leaving this job to go to school full time. not that i wouldn't LOVE to do that, but we can't afford it. well, really, you can afford anything you're willing to sacrifice for, but i have a husband to think about, and he probably isn't up to supporting me and him. not that we've ever crunched the numbers. oh, well.
b. paying for school. yeah, we just don't have enough debt these days.
c. that i decide what the f*ck i want to do in the medical field. i dream of going to med school. of course, that would probably ruin my marriage, since i would never see my husband. again, we've never talked about it.

if i were renting and/or still single, what would i do? i have no idea. probably exactly the same thing. there are too many options, but too many factors in each option that i am paralyzed with indecision. so i sit at this job that gives me no pleasure whatsoever and collect a paycheck. and i waste my life.

i have some friends who just had a baby. they read my blog from time to time, so i don't want to offend or say something that i have no right to say. so saying that, these are my feelings that i am not going to edit.

when i found this friend (after a long time), i read their blog and found out they had had triplets in the last year. i wrote an email to congratulate her and her to say hello. before i sent it, i read more of her blog and realized that the triplets were micro-preemies and that their baby boy had died. the twin girls spent a long time in the NICU. i can't say how glad i was that i didn't send that first email. i rewrote the email to still say hello, but to say how sorry i am that they had to go through the loss of a child. it took her a while to write back and i thought i had said something wrong (i never know what to say in times of pain) or that she hadn't gotten the email. a few weeks/months later, she replied, saying she was sorry that she hadn't replied sooner, but that she had just experienced a miscarriage and was having a hard time with it. ok, so the loss of an infant and a miscarriage (which may have not been the first, since i think the triplets were conceived with help).

we corresponded a while and she admitted that she was pregnant again. i crossed my fingers, toes, arms, legs, eyes, intestines... anything i could. i knocked on wood, i prayed, i thought about her and her family often. i commented on her blog about how i hoped this birth was the most boring thing that she had ever done, after the surprise of the last experience.

she gave birth to her second son on the day he was due. she looked great right up to that last pic she posted. i think it was a relief for her to be READY to give birth. a few days goes by with no posts and i assume they had their baby. the next post was pictures of their boy and this statement: "...there are some unexpected grave medical concerns that surface..."

he has Joubert syndrome.

Joubert syndrome is a rare genetic disorder that affects the area of the brain that controls balance and coordination. The disorder is characterized by absence or underdevelopment of a part of the brain called the cerebellar vermis and a malformed brain stem (molar tooth sign). The most common features include ataxia (lack of muscle control), an abnormal breathing pattern called hyperpnea, sleep apnea, abnormal eye and tongue movements, and hypotonia. Other malformations such as extra fingers and toes, cleft lip or palate, tongue abnormalities, and seizures may also occur. There may be mild or moderate retardation.

here's where my feelings come out: really? i mean, really? if i feel like they've been completely robbed, then how do they feel? but the baby is totally beautiful. from the pictures, he looks totally normal (with the exception of the ng tube). but he could have a litany of issues, retardation being one of the major ones. and now they just get to sit and wait to see what happens. my friend's husband (who is amazingly introspective) made a statement about loss on their blog today. it makes me feel guilty to say "loss" since the baby is alive. and because this isn't my situation, i feel that i don't have the right to say i also feel a loss for them. i don't know. it's just a hard situation. do you say sorry? hang in there? maybe it won't be all that bad?

the whole situation just breaks my heart. into a million tiny pieces. no one ever wants anything bad to happen to anyone's baby. but you wonder how much suffering one family should have to take. so i'll keep praying... that their adorable little boy has the lightest of problems. that he faces nothing that won't make him a stronger, better person.

history in the making

i hope i can get some work done today instead of looking at the polls every 5 minutes. we're not going to the rally, but a bunch of people from work are. scott and i took tomorrow off to (hopefully) celebrate. if obama doesn't win, we're packing and moving to canada. seriously. and not canada by alaska.... canada by maine. as far from alaska as possible.

anyway, i was thinking if obama wins, i might want to boost the economy and buy an iPod Touch. someone talk me out of it...