not that you asked...

I know you do this. (Also! Super Fun Friday Guessing Game!)

So let's say there's a pair of jeans in the laundry basket. Recently washed, recently partially air-dried, then finished off in the dryer on the lowest heat setting, so they don't mildew. But because they were in the hamper for a while, and then because it took a day and a half to air-dry them before I chucked them in the dryer, I haven't worn them for a bit. Five days, maybe? Six? And even though they're my absolute FAVORITE JEANS, and I have been wearing them for YEARS, I am nervous about putting them on. So I hang them up in the closet instead, and wear the same pair of jeans I wore the day before. Even though I don't love them. Even though I would rather be wearing my favorite pair.

I threw out my $7 scale over a year ago (some days I weighed 130 in the morning and 210 in the afternoon, and something about that just didn't seem right) so I mostly use my clothes to gauge whether I've gained or lost weight. And when I haven't worn something in a few days, like my favorite jeans, I start to panic that I'm going to try to put them on and not be able to pull them over my knees or something. Like perhaps I've done exactly what my scale always tried to convince me I was doing on a daily basis. And it gets exponentially worse if I've WASHED them, because it's possible they will have SHRUNK, and gotten STIFF, and I will be able to feel even the most MARGINAL OF CHANGES IN SIZE.

Am I right? The worst feeling is when I finally put them on, and they feel... off. You know? And the whole time I'm wearing them, I'm thinking, should they really feel this snug across the hips? Am I imagining that they're pulling a little across my butt? Did I dry them for too long or did my suddenly enlarged thighs turn them into DENIM LEGGINGS BEFORE MY VERY EYES? And usually I'll wear them for a couple of days, until they're all loose and baggy and should not be worn in public unless I want someone to take pity on me and hand me a sandwich and some loose change. And I feel WAY BETTER about myself when they're all stretched out and saggy; sometimes, I even FORGET that they're stretched out and saggy, and I put them on and think, “holy crap, Self? You should have a COOKIE or two! DANG but these jeans are getting WAY TOO BIG!” And then I eat those cookies, and maybe a pizza, and maybe some fries, and maybe some of Asher's fries, and then it's time to wash them again after I wipe my greasy hands on the legs, and then? After I wash them? It's time to do Paragraph One of this entry, ALL OVER AGAIN.

I do this all year round, but it's particularly painful in the winter, when the rain and the darkness and the cold keeps me from running five miles a day, or pushing the kids around the lake in the stroller. I'm trying to work up enough enthusiasm to break out my 30 Day Shred video for the days I can't get outside, but it is so hard to eat dinner and put the kids to bed and not want to just collapse on the couch with my laptop for the remainder of the night. I am trying to get up and run in the morning, but I am having this Major Sleep Issue where it doesn't matter whether the baby wakes up one time or 2500 times a night, I cannot fall back asleep. I have never struggled with this kind of thing before, so it is KILLING ME.

Also, my back hurts.

So yeah, it scares me when my favorite jeans are clean and I might have to put them on. Because I haven't been exercising like I was in the early fall, or the summer, or the spring, and exercise is my foolproof way of staying out of my old size 12 (OKAY, 14, YOU GOT ME) pants. Good eating habits are not. TRUE STORY.

I don't know how to wrap all of this up and end this entry so LISTEN TO THIS. I was over at my parents' house a couple of weeks ago, and it was a warmish kind of day, and there were bugs EVERYWHERE. (Yes, these bugs.) Mostly the bugs stayed on the outside of the screened-in porch, but some of those creepers lucked into flying through a crack or a hole or something, so there were three or four inside the living room. So I told my mom about them, and she got all irritated, you know, “WHY do we pay an exterminator if we're going to have to exterminate them OURSELVES,” and she dragged a chair over to the wall where the bugs were clinging so she could reach them and then, instead of smacking them with a rolled-up newspaper or a shoe, you know, like a normal person would, SHE SCRAPED THEM INTO A PLASTIC BAGGIE.

“Mom, what are you doing?” I asked. My first thought was that she was trying to SAVE them, which is RIDICULOUS, and I am a professed Saver of Many Animals, including mice and turtles and worms. But she wasn't. She was going to collect them and give them to my father.

I don't think you would ever, in a million bazillion years, guess what my father was doing with those bugs. And it just occurred to me that maybe you might want to take a stab at it? For a prize? Go ahead, guess in the comments. If anyone gets it right, I'll gladly scrape together some kind of delightful care package. But I won't have to, because OMG, you guys, WHO ON EARTH WOULD COLLECT BUGS FOR THE REASON MY DAD DOES? Dude, my family is so weird. No seriously, go on. GUESS. (I'll tell you on Monday, unless someone guesses, and then I'll just update this post with the winner and the correct answer.)

Book Review: Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD, by Beth Alison Maloney

 

I was offered another opportunity to do another book review for the same company that offered me the chance to read and review The Curse of the Good Girl, so I took it. As a general rule, I don't turn down free reading material, ESPECIALLY if it is memoir-ish, so a few weeks ago, I was sent a copy of Saving Sammy: Curing the Boy Who Caught OCD, by Beth Alison Maloney. I read it cover to cover in the span of two evenings. Sammy had just turned 13 when, out of the blue, he began exhibiting bizarre behaviors that corresponded with the some of the hallmark symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The synopsis (because I can't write them for crap, remember?) lifted from the TLC Book Tours website:

“Sammy’s mother, Beth, already coping with the overwhelming responsibility of raising three sons alone, watched helplessly as her middle child descended into madness. Sammy was soon diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and later with Tourette syndrome. Unwilling to accept the doctors’ prognoses for lifelong mental illness and repeated hospitalizations, Beth fought to uncover what was causing this decline. Racing against time as Sammy slipped further from reality, Beth’s quest took her to the center of the medical community’s raging debate about whether mental illness can be caused by infection. With the battle lines firmly drawn, Beth searched until she found two cutting-edge doctors who answered that question with a definitive yes. Together, they cured Sammy. Five years later, he remains symptom free.”

There is no doubt that Beth Maloney is an amazing woman. She was already a freaking superhero for being a single mom raising three boys and working full-time as a lawyer. So I don't even know what to call her when she took on the additional full-time job of caring for and finding a way to treat a son with a crippling mental illness. And when I say “crippling,” I mean CRIPPLING. Sammy was so sick that he couldn't go to school, couldn't leave the house, couldn't get up the stairs and into his room sometimes without it taking HOURS. I recall at one point, the family stayed at a hotel, and it took Sammy more than two hours to walk from the van in the parking lot to the hotel room simply because he had to perform so many rituals and compulsions along the way. Sammy was a really, really sick kid. So in addition to taking care of two kids who were functioning normally and needed to go to school and get help with homework and be shuttled to activities and oh, I don't know, FED MEALS, Beth Maloney was working full-time, caring 24 hours a day for an exhaustingly ill child that no one knew how best to help, and whenever she got a spare moment, researching ways to make him better.

Dude. Think about that. I complain if Dave is home late from work, and I don't have someone to corral the kids so I can finish getting dinner on the table. I get frustrated when I have to get up three times a night with Lucy or when I can't get Asher to eat what I've made for dinner or say thank you when I hand him a sippy cup of water. And she held it together – well, okay, she did way more than just hold it together – with a situation a thousand times more dire than anything I've ever experienced as a parent. I think about how lucky Sammy was to have a mom who fought for him the way she did. Maybe this is going to sound awful, but I have to hope I would do the same thing for my kids. I mean, I know we all say that we would do anything for our kids, ANYTHING, but I really do lack an empathetic side. I have this sinking feeling that in Beth's place, I would have gotten angry, and frustrated. And not at the disease, as she did, but at my child. I have a history of having a hard time seeing past the circumstances and laying blame at the right place. I worry that I would be the kind of person who said, Buck up! Shake it off! instead of finding a way to redirect my frustration toward the disease. I'm thankful that I married someone whose talents and gifts fill in the gaps I leave open as we parent our children together. But if I was a single parent? I shudder to think about where I would be had I been in her shoes.

Anyway, the coolest thing about this book is that SAMMY GETS BETTER. I'm not spoiling it for you, the ending is splashed all over the cover. Sammy was eventually diagnosed with PANDAS (Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcus Infections). In layman's terms, this basically means a strep infection was the root of Sammy's disorder. PANDAS research is still relatively new, so Maloney wrote this book (which she says was a painful journey) to try to educate others. In fact, one doctor estimates that there may be as many as 500,000 children in the United States affected by PANDAS. Half a million kids suffering from behavioral disorders, some of them SEVERE, all possibly caused by a strep infection. That's incredible information that apparently, most doctors are still unaware exists.

If I had one complaint about the book, it would be that at times it seemed a little disjointed; it doesn't always flow nicely. I understand that Maloney isn't a trained writer, and it isn't like the book is poorly written or anything, I just would have liked more detail and more background in some areas, and less in others (for example, each chapter begins with a descriptive page or two about Maine weather, and while I could see that those descriptions were to give us some sense of time, I sometimes felt they got in the way of me getting to the next part of the story). And I never felt really and truly MOVED by the writing. It's an amazing, awesome story, don't get me wrong, but it didn't inspire a lot of emotion in me. And it doesn't usually take much for me to turn on the waterworks. I cry at commercials.

That said. I think it's a fascinating read. I love medical mysteries (one of my favorite television shows? MYSTERY DIAGNOSIS) and I loved the happy ending, and as horrible as it was, it was really fascinating to get a first-hand account of what severe OCD is really like. I hope this book does what Maloney hoped it would – gets the word out that PANDAS exists, and that it can be treated.

Humor Genius

Have you seen that commercial for the next episode of House? I mean, I don't watch House – not regularly, at least, though sometimes if I'm flipping through channels I'll stop and watch because I have this weird fascination with British people doing believable American accents – but the ad was on during a football game, and I wasn't really paying attention until Dave said, “Hold on a minute... did you see that?” and pressed rewind on the DVR so we could watch it together. The gist of the episode seems to be that House shows up at an '80s theme party in a powdered wig and frilly blue costume, because he's dressed as though he's from the 1880s. Get it? It's still an eighties costume! JUST FROM THE WRONG CENTURY!

“That's YOUR joke!” Dave exclaimed. And he is RIGHT.

Back in my junior year of high school, which I'm sad to tell you was FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, our youth group held a '60s theme night, and there was a prize up for grabs for best costume. So I wore a big, floor-length patchwork skirt and a pair of boots and a ruffly blouse and a bonnet – YES, A BONNET – and went from the 1860s. People, it was the BEST COSTUME OF THE NIGHT, but I was disqualified because it was “understood” that we were talking the NINETEEN SIXTIES, even though no one had actually specified it.

My mouth hung open. “I must be a humor GENIUS,” I said to Dave. To have made a joke that well-paid television series writers came up with? And to have done it fifteen years ago? WHEN I WAS SIXTEEN? Why did I not get offered a free ride to HUMOR WRITING COLLEGE? If a place like that EVEN EXISTS?

And then Dave said, “That's why I fell in love with you,” and I don't know about you, but any man who professes to have been attracted to you simply because you wore a bonnet to a public function for the sole purpose of creating a scene and making people laugh is a keeper. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the only reason he fell in love with me (in high school I also lost a bet once that resulted in my wearing a camouflage hunting outfit out in public, complete with orange netted cap, sure to make a man's heart skip a beat) but it's good to know that if I continue to act like just like myself, he will most likely stick with me. And he will LIKE IT.

Sometimes I think he's got a screw loose, but whatever. Dude thinks I'm hot in a bonnet. Guess it doesn't hurt that I'm a humor genius, too.

In other news, and I Twittered this earlier so excuse the repeat if you already heard, but about a half-hour into what was supposed to be Asher's nap this afternoon, Dave heard him calling from his room. So he went in to see what the problem was, and Asher actually requested some pants. I had put him down for his nap in just a shirt and a diaper, and he wanted PANTS. Pants! And Dave had to put them on him! While he laid in bed! JUST LIKE HIS MOTHER. It was almost the most hilarious thing I'd heard all week, and then I remembered I had explained the word “booty” to Asher the other night.

I try to video the cutest parts of my day, so that I can watch them and remind myself they actually DO exist after watching one of my offspring throw a shoe at the other one's head.

Don't think Dora has grown on me. SHE HASN'T.

My children have conspired to make sure that one of them is making life... let's go with difficult (for lack of a better, non-four-letter word) around the clock, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Lucy's talents are particularly well-suited for making me want to pull my hair out and punch crib mattresses between the hours of 7pm and 7am, and then when she gets up in the morning, I assume she gives some sort of secret signal to Asher (I picture her narrowing her eyes and dragging a tiny index finger across her throat when my back is turned to grab a diaper) and he accepts the relay baton of Operation Parental Destruction.

Lucy is working on her two top teeth. I know I should have more sympathy for her than I do. I know it must hurt, those jagged peaks of enamel breaking through her soft widdle gums. And God forbid she inherited MY teeth, as anyone who has ever seen me in person can attest, I have front teeth the exact shape and size of Chiclets, so cutting those suckers is probably no walk in the park. Each time she cries out for comfort in the middle of the night (ALL EIGHT OF THEM), I take my sympathetic response down a notch or two. Which is the OPPOSITE of what I SHOULD do, I know. Intellectually I know that more frequent wakings means the baby is in more pain and discomfort, but guess what? SO AM I. Do you know how badly my eyes burn after having to pry them open and then use them EIGHT DIFFERENT TIMES between the hours of midnight and five a.m.?

And then she gets up for the day at seven and pretends that we haven't seen each other every 45 minutes for the last 12 hours. That kind of charms me, I'll be honest. Especially if I was wearing my angry and frustrated face for our last meeting. But it's like she doesn't care, she's standing up in her crib and babbling and doing her best Godfather impression when she sees the photo collage of herself hanging on the wall. (I should videotape that. Words do it no justice.)

I get about 15 minutes of peace with her before her brother gets up and assumes his duties. About three seconds after he gets out of bed he starts whining and he doesn't let up until he's in bed for the night at 8:30, which FUNNILY ENOUGH, HAHA, coincides with Lucy's first scheduled wakeup for tooth comfort. It's amazing how they do it. I won't go into details about what Asher's job description entails. Suffice to say that I'm guessing he's just THREE, and is exploring all the different ways he can express himself, as long as those expressions make me want to lock him in a broom closet until he turns eight. (Short version is that we're working on asking for things politely and being gentle and kind with Lucy.) (And the short version to the question you're undoubtedly asking now is NO, it's NOT GOING VERY WELL.)

Which also means that even though Asher turned three a full month ago, we have not been pushing the potty training issue. We have some hurdles to work through still with communicating effectively with him (I have never met a child so hardened to bribery or peer pressure) but I did cave and buy him some (VERY PINK) Dora pull-ups a couple of weeks ago in hopes that it would encourage him. (It didn't.)

Can we just talk for a second about television characters? Can someone please explain to me why children's television shows feature normal, relatively sexless and genderless characters and yet the marketing for those shows turns them into either very masculine or very feminine personas? Take Dora, for example. If you watch a regular, 25-minute episode of Dora on Nickelodeon, there's absolutely nothing about it that would make a boy/male viewer feel as if it was too girly or exclusionary to his gender. Dora doesn't wear anything frilly or ridiculous, she has a crappy haircut, she has some pretty dorky friends (someone tell me what that squirrelly thing with the buck teeth is, and why he can DRIVE). But she does cool stuff. She helps people. She's selfless. She plays SPORTS. Yes, sometimes there are girly-ish things like rainbows and butterflies, but these things also OCCUR IN NATURE.

Now take the MARKETED Dora. There are DVDS of Dora princess movies and there are pink toothbrushes with Mermaid Dora on them and there are talking Dora dolls and pink Dora underpants and pull-ups. These are all things that are marketed only to girls, even though the Dora television show is not girly at all. So boys who like Dora are subjugated to wearing/buying things that are pink or girly, much to their fathers' dismay. (SPEAKING HERE OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE.) Whereas if a girl happens to watch a show like Diego (again, a situation where the show itself is neutral and geared mostly towards kids who like animals, not necessarily just BOYS) it's considered totally okay for her to own/wear Diego merchandise, because of the double standard of girls being able to wear boy clothes/play with boy toys/be named boy names and society being totally okay with it. It's not usually okay the other way around.

I PERSONALLY am not opposed to buying my boy pink things. If I am buying him something that he likes, and it happens to be pink, well then, that's fine. (Case in point, two pink Mermaid Dora toothbrushes sitting on the bathroom counter. Because you can't buy REGULAR Dora toothbrushes! She has to be GIRLIFIED for some reason.) That's not my issue, though, even though it's annoying. It's okay for princess stuff to exist. I just don't understand why EVERYTHING has to be princess-related. I think my issue with it is the same issue a lot of moms have with the overabundance of girly princessy things: that they don't want their daughters growing up thinking the absolute coolest thing a girl can be is a beautiful, long-haired princess. 

Likewise, I don't want my SON growing up thinking that the only things girls are good for is being a princess or a mermaid or some other crappy fantasy. Why can't the Dora from the cartoon show be the same Dora that's portrayed in the merchandise? (And I know the REAL reason, obviously, because this kind of crap makes money, and who's to say that I won't buy it once my daughter is old enough to care? I can't say that I won't, because I haven't been there yet.) But for my son, and I know this is a first-world problem, the idea of struggling over marketing for a television show, but just BEAR WITH ME, I would like him to be able to admire a girl on a television show because she does cool, kind, and brave things. But he'll end up being bombarded by images of that same girl being reduced to a princess or a mermaid, neither of whom I tend to admire very much. THE WORLD DOES NOT NEED MORE PRINCESSES. Can I get an amen?

Geez, as much whining and wearing me out that kid does, you wouldn't think I'd have any motherly instincts left with which to love and protect him, and also RAISE HIM TO RESPECT WOMEN, but it turns out I do.

Two Stories About Pants

So Dave and I were lying in bed watching television the other night when, out of the blue, he asked me if the pants he'd put on me the other night were the right ones.

Um. Excuse me? What now?

“You know, the other night,” he said. “When you woke me up and told me to take your pants off and get you some different ones.”

Now, I don't remember this happening, but Dave insists that it did. Apparently I got all hot and sweaty in my sleep, and couldn't figure out how to get my sweatpants off, and all the noise and the kicking and thrashing woke him up. And I wasn't fully awake, but I was groaning and complaining about my pants and how I wanted them off and how I wanted to wear DIFFERENT PANTS and wouldn't you know? Luckily I married the nicest, kindest person in the world, because he actually DID IT FOR ME. He took my sweatpants off, GOT OUT OF BED, went to the closet, turned on the light, found another pair of pajama pants, and PUT THEM ON ME. In the middle of the night. In the dark. While I guess I just lay there, like a big, sweaty, sleeping, boneless blob of uselessness.

“You did that?” I asked him, astounded. “You... you got me another pair of pants? You DRESSED ME in the middle of the night?”

“Well you TOLD me to,” he said rather matter-of-factly. “You woke me up! What was I supposed to do? What would you have done?”

Well, I'll tell you what, Internet. If he'd woken me up in the middle of the night insisting I change his pants for him? I'd have woken him out of whatever creepy, freakshow dream he was having and, in my very best could-you-possibly-irritate-me-ANY-MORE voice, told him to GET HIS OWN FREAKING PANTS, because I'm trying to get some SLEEP here, OKAY? Remember me? Your wife? The one who still gets up with the BABY every night? I have no time or energy for this crap, okay? Wake up. CHANGE YOUR OWN PANTS. Also, LEAVE ME ALONE. Then there would be some heavy sighing and some harumphing and some angry pillow fluffing and then I would have gone back to sleep. Facing the wall.

And yet, the shame of knowing I am married to someone who is 1000 percent nicer to me than I would be to him in a similar situation. I'm working on that, okay? I'm really good at making sure the laundry is done and keeping the cabinets stocked with Veggie Booty and Yuengling and forgiving people for never ever closing cabinets after they open them (I WORKED HARD FOR THAT ONE) but as a general rule, I lack empathy. I am about as empathetic as a truckload of sod. Doesn't it count for something that I know this and am trying to fix it? DOESN'T IT?

Anyway, a couple of days later, Dave got dressed for work in one of two new pairs of jeans I'd bought him at Macy's over the weekend. (Something else I'm good at is keeping my family clothed in relatively recent fashion.) I was pretty excited that I'd found at least one pair that he liked without having to drag him along with me, where he would refuse to try anything on until we bought it and brought it home, leaving me to return it all the following week. Lather, rinse, repeat. Also, Dave is afraid of descriptive denim-related words like “boot-cut” or “rinse” and I always think he settles for a safe pair when he could do so much better. Anyway, he came downstairs wearing them and I gave them a glowing review.

“Wow, they look really good!” I said enthusiastically. And then, “Do you like them?” He replied that he did, and after one more quick once-over, I commented that maybe, although I thought they looked great, that maybe they were a little short? Should I have gotten a longer length? But he said no, they were fine and if I wanted to return the other pair and get him a duplicate pair of the ones he was wearing, that would be great. I agreed and he left for work. It should be noted that later that same morning (foreshadowing, FTW!), I was unable to find the pair of jeans I'd worn the night before to dinner at his parents' house. After a quick search, I assumed I must have thrown them in the wash with the load of darks I'd started after breakfast.

He wore them again the next day. That afternoon, I was cleaning up our bedroom while the kids were napping when I came across the Macy's bag with the other pair of jeans in it. I picked it up and set it by the door so I'd remember to take it downstairs with me when I saw... wait, what the...? WHY ARE THERE STILL TWO PAIRS OF JEANS IN THIS BAG? If there are two pairs of jeans in this bag, then Dave isn't wearing the ones I bought him...

Which means it is entirely possible that he is wearing... NO. Please, God, NOOOOOOOO.

Naturally, I got myself right over to the computer and pulled up Twitter. Let's see... 140 characters of shame? I guess we'll go with, “I am wondering if my husband accidentally wore my jeans to work.” Aaaaand... update!

And then I called him.

“It seems that I am,” he said. We laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed and then he came home and changed into his OWN JEANS and we discussed who this might be more embarrassing for, him for wearing women's jeans to work (Express brand)? Or me, the wife whose husband FITS INTO her jeans, with room to spare?

Yeah, pretty much a toss up.

Seven Quick Takes: Things I Don't Trust

One: The FiOS channel guide. I've mentioned this before, I think. The FiOS guide is FREQUENTLY WRONG. And most of the time, it's not a big deal. Sometimes episodes that are labeled as “new” aren't really new at all except that they are still new to me. And it doesn't really matter what kinds of descriptions I get for shows on TLC because I can leave TLC on for 72 straight hours and enjoy every moment of programming, save for that creepy monkey-as-baby show, which I refuse to watch because monkeys are disgusting. Full stop. So the FiOS thing wouldn't be such a problem except for the minor fact that I live with a three-year-old boy who has developed all sorts of irrational three-year-old fears. He panics when my phone beeps in a different way and he covers his ears when the toilet flushes and he starts to tremble when the trash men arrive if you haven't been quick enough to prepare him that they are JUST AROUND THE CORNER and the noise he will hear is just bottles being thrown into the recycling bin. So when the FiOS guide says that the episode of Jack's Big Music Show coming on at 8:30 will be the one featuring Phil the Coo Coo Bird and instead it's the one with Spunky the Alien? Spunky the Alien who is VERY VERY SCAWY? Well, FiOS. I do not particularly enjoy giving my child a very specific reason to have nightmares just because you're too lazy to get your program guide correct. DO NOT TRUST.

Two: Leaving Hambone alone in the house. Now don't get me wrong, Hambone is a Mostly Perfect Dog. I'd say... oh, 95 percent. He's mega-weird, that's for sure, but you could leave a whole pepperoni pizza on the coffee table and leave the room and he would never, EVER touch it. (He will steal the kids' food right out of their hands, but we think this is because he believes he is above them.) However, since I quit my job and started staying home full-time three-ish years ago, Hambone is rarely left alone. I mean, obviously if we run out to Target or church, he isn't coming with us (side note: does anyone else think it's only a matter of time before someone starts a church that allows pets?) but I take him with me if I am going to spend the morning or afternoon at my parents' house, and we are rarely gone for a full day (NAPS, MUST PRESERVE THE HOLINESS OF THE NAP SCHEDULE) so when he IS left by himself for what he feels is a less-than-desirable amount of time, he leaves a delightful deposit of anal gland fluid on the couch. On our ONLY couch; the one we HAVE to sit on because there IS NO OTHER COUCH AVAILABLE. I don't have any idea whether this act is one of defiance or of sadness and desperation, but it stinks either way. If you've never smelled anal gland fluid, consider yourself lucky. It is potent and vile and it requires me to pull the covers off the couch cushions and scrub them down and then douse the entire room in Febreze, but WORSE, it requires me to take a washcloth to my dog's nether regions to try to scrub off any remaining scent. I have started covering the couch whenever we leave the house, which is both a time suck and a general teeth-clenching annoyance. DO NOT TRUST.

Three: Push-button locks. I am, as a general rule, extremely skeptical when using a restroom that has a push-button lock. I mean, a deadbolt or a slide lock? Both offer visual proof that no one is going to walk freely into that bathroom and see me with my pants around my knees. But the push-button lock? HOW DO I KNOW IT'S WORKING? I'm just supposed to press this tiny little button and that's going to do the job? This MEAGER, TEENSY LITTLE BUTTON? That I just push in, weakly, with my ONE PINKY FINGER, until it clicks. Riiiiiiiight. Seriously. I'll just hold it, thank you. DO NOT TRUST.

Four: Local meteorologists. Always wrong. Always always always. I pledge my loyalty to The Weather Channel and their finely assembled team of national meteorologists, especially the ones who wear those blue Weather Channel raincoats and head out into hurricanes. Now THAT'S meteorology, people! That is TRUE WEATHER LOVE. The local dudes don't even go outside. They don't want to personally show us rain, or sunshine, or snow, for fear it may interfere with their perfectly coiffed and cemented hair. They'd rather show us primary-colored maps with big capital Hs and Ls and they want to wear suits with ugly ties and present the Five-Day Outlook painfully illustrated with really cheap clip art. Also, they're always wrong, did I mention that? DO NOT TRUST.

Five: Postal workers. In a similar vein, I do not trust Postal Workers. What I don't like is when I take my packages to the desk (even though as soon as there are more than three people in line, they always start yelling about the AUTOMATED SYSTEM IN THE BACK where you can PRINT YOUR OWN LABELS and I'm always thinking, geez, it's not like there are 80 people crammed in here, how about a less obvious way of showing us how little you like interacting with LIVING SOULS?) and I tell the person where I want to send them and the worker always tells me - rather blandly - about the express mail option and the priority mail option but never the much less expensive parcel post option even though the parcel post option always comes up on the little credit card reader that is RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY FACE. So then I feel stupid asking about the parcel post option, because why wouldn't the employee have already told me about it if it was available? And then I think, well, should I really be trusting this little electronic screen in front of me anyway? Although, in about three seconds, I'm going to willingly feed it sensitive information like, oh, my credit card number; surely it has SOME redeeming qualities. Frankly, I find the whole thing kind of sketchy. And then I never end up saying anything, and spending more money than I probably need to spend at the post office, and on the way out of the building someone is always screwing up the automated machine but sometimes I think the embarrassment of that situation pales in comparison to interacting with some of the employees themselves, who may or may not be lying to me about parcel post. DO NOT TRUST.

Six: My ear infection instincts. Asher has had two ear infections in his life. Two, and only two. And yet, each time he gets a cold, and turns cranky, I haul him into the pediatrician's office. I have even hauled him into the after-hours pediatrician, and paid more than twice the usual co-pay. Altogether, I have probably made eight trips to the doctor's office to specifically check on the State of his Ears. I am always wrong. OK, so twice I was right, but what's two for eight? Twenty-five percent? I wish ear infections were like poopy diapers, you know? You can suspect all you want, but all you really have to do is press your nose to the back of someone's pants for an answer. The thing I hate most is that I TALK TOO MUCH. The doctor comes in and suddenly I feel a pressing urge to convince him of my absolute certainty that there's an ear infection before he's even CHECKED for one, and I'm blabbing on and on about the FEVER and the INTERRUPTED SLEEP and the DRAINAGE and the IRRITIBILITY and on and on and on and after I've babbled for five, ten, maybe twenty minutes, I NEVER KNOW, he says something like, well, let's take a look. And then there's this long, drawn-out silence while he looks at one ear and doesn't say a word, and then looks in the other ear, and then he always turns around and throws away the disposable ear cone and hangs the little scope with the light back on the wall before turning back around as s l o w l y as possible before saying, “Everything looks just fine. Perfect, even.” And then I stutter and eek out something about how he SEEMED so sick and golly I suck at this and pardon me, but where is the checkout sheet so I can BAIL ON THIS SITUATION ASAP? Me + suspected ear infection = DO NOT TRUST.

Seven: Any institution that substitutes a K where a C or a Q should rightly be. No thank you, Kwik Kopy. I AM APPALLED. As such? DO NOT TRUST.

Running: What You Dood (that's how Asher says "what I did," which never fails to make me laugh)

I got a lot of comments and a handful of emails asking for a more detailed description of my training plan for the half-marathon. I was surprised, frankly. Did I come across as somewhat authoritative and confident in that last post? Were you under the impression that I did anything other than SHUFFLE over the finish line and then complain about my aching knees for the next 48 hours? Did I leave out that part about being nauseous for the entire hour-long car ride home and maybe suspecting that the ripe scent of my armpits was the sole contributing factor?

So anyway, while I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, an expert or even a very well-informed runner, I will gladly share what worked for me.

I started training six months out, which was also about three months postpartum. I hadn't exercised for MONTHS when I started training – I'd been sidelined at the end of my pregnancy with swelling and general achiness – so I thought it was best to allow myself a lot of time to accomplish my goal. When I first started, I consulted the Hal Higdon Half Marathon Training Guide for the Novice Runner. I never followed it to the letter, but it gave me some general guidelines as to what I needed to work up to. The program actually worked really well for me at the very beginning, when I was huffing and puffing up hills and walking when it got tough and wanting to die when I got home. It was a great guide to start getting me in shape.

I'll be honest, at the beginning, running wasn't exactly fun. It was strenuous and punishing and time-consuming. Ok, ok, truthfully? It was hard. It felt unnatural. And every time I would see a hill coming up, I would dread having to run up it because I knew I would be out of breath when I got to the top; I knew my legs would burn and that nine times out of ten, I'd have to take a walk break to regain my composure before continuing on. I always felt good when I finished a run, but in the beginning, I can't say that I always enjoyed it. I wore my iPod so that I could listen to music to inspire me, but I also wore it so it would drown out the sound of my own heavy breathing.

I would say I ran four or five days a week. If I didn't run, then I walked the dog three miles, or I took the kids out in the stroller for the same distance (pushing NINETY POUNDS OF STROLLER AND KIDS up and down hills is called STRENGTH TRAINING). There were very few days when I did little or no exercise at all. And gradually, I was able to build up the stamina to take longer daily runs. In the beginning, it was all I could do to get through three miles. Back then, I tried doing a longer run (up to five or six miles) once a week, but I had to walk a lot of it. By August and September, though, I was able to run six miles at a time (when I had the opportunity) and I was also able to enjoy it. (The cooler weather definitely helped. It isn't particularly fun running in 90 percent humidity in July.) I never stopped dreading hills, but I always forgot why I dreaded them by the time I was halfway up – even hills got easier, and I rarely had to decrease my speed to finish the climb, nor did I have to stop or slow down to catch my breath when I got to the top.

I confess, I did only one REALLY long run before the half-marathon, and it was eight miles. And I walked a LOT of it, because I hadn't brought water, and was running on an unfamiliar trail, and it was sunny and hot and I was wearing shorts that I didn't usually wear and they were CHAFING MY THIGHS and IT HURT and basically it was just a big hot disaster. And I meant to go out for another one before the race, but I never found the time, and in the end, it turned out that it didn't matter much anyway.

So My Official Theory on running is that if you run often, and stay committed, and push yourself to do one more mile or half-mile or lap even when you really don't want to but you're pretty sure you CAN, then you'll be in good enough shape to finish the race without having done the long-run training component. Of course, the long-run training component can only help you. And I think it's pretty essential to try at least ONE long run if you've never EVER done one before. (I had run two 10-mile races before the half-marathon, so I knew what I was in for, even if I found out what I was in for, like, six years ago or something.) For me, consistently running five or six miles, three times a week (with some cross-training and shorter runs thrown in) was enough to get my body into really good shape, and I knew I could tolerate running 13 miles, even if I didn't do it fast or pretty. My goal was to FINISH, and I was hoping I'd be able to run the entire time. Check, and also CHECK.

As for WHEN to run, well, it gets considerably harder when the days get shorter. I'm not much for treadmills or the gym, I confess. I don't mind running in the rain or the cold. I like the feeling of getting out the door, leaving the house and the kids behind, and seeing things and people along the way. I like tiptoeing past a bunch of grazing deer and waving hello to kids in strollers and watching the sun go down over the lake. During the summer, I'd put Lucy to bed before heading out around 7:15. I could squeeze in at least 45 minutes of running before it got even REMOTELY dark. Sometimes when Dave gets home from work around 6:15 and I know we're having dinner after the kids go to bed, I rush out the door to squeeze in a jog before bathtime. But I realize that soon it will be dark by 5pm, and my only hope is to try to run in the morning, which I hate, but which I will reluctantly do, because I don't want to backslide. I don't want to have to start all over from scratch. I love what my body feels like NOW when I'm running. I don't want to be the beginner again, with my lungs burning all the time and my knees wobbling when I tried to climb the stairs when I got home. No thanks.

I can't guarantee that you'll love it, but I think if you condition your body to be in good enough shape to do it well, then you might actually find that you enjoy it.

I hope this answered some questions. Like I said, me = furthest thing from running expert, but I'm happy to share my experience because it was a good one.