Now Appearing..... ~ by Jay

Since I have so much free time, I'm now writing for another blog.

Well, maybe not free time, but I couldn't pass up the chance to participate in Modern Mitzvot. Join me there (and Brown Shoes and The Girl Detective) to explore issues of social justice and Judaism and what we think about Israeli policies and whatever else seems appropriate to us.

Wish I'd Said That ~ by Jay

I bow down to Sweet Machine at Shapely Prose

.....one of the great rhetorical tricks of patriarchy....is to define women’s value in terms of appearance, and simultaneously to define appearance as something so utterly trivial that only completely shallow and useless creatures — like, say, women! — would care about it.

Yes. Precisely.

The Ones Who Are Left ~ by Jay

Toddlers crawling up on the bed while I'm examining a hospice patient, wanting to cuddle with Daddy, carefully moving the oxygen line.

Seven-year-olds who firmly believe that we go somewhere else after we die, because they want Mommy to have another life.

Teenagers who haven't yet had time to get past their rebellion and embrace their parents, and lose them before they get them back.

Young adults who cry at the sight of their newborn baby, never to know her grandparent.

Middle-aged folk like me, figuring out how to live without the steady words of love at the other end of the phone.

My mother, losing her parents in her 60s, a lifetime ahead of her so different from the lifetime behind.

When WIll We Ever Learn? ~ by Jay

That when our daughter is a sobbing, incoherent, thumb-sucking mess of a child after camp, no matter what she says is wrong and no matter how obnoxious she is, we should do only one thing:

FEED HER.

Today it took us over 30 minutes of trying to reason with her (what WERE we thinking?) before we finally presented her with dinner. Halfway through the first tortilla, she was smiling.

Someday we'll actually remember this at the beginning of the fuss. Someday.

In Which I Confront My Internalized Misogyny ~ by Jay

I wanted to write about mommyblogging. I was going to explain at great length why I'm not really a mommyblogger. I'm not obsessed with my child. I'm not defined by my child. I'm a real person with all these other thoughts and interests and skills. I'm not one of those.

What, I wonder, would be wrong with being one of those? Uh-oh. Internalized sexism alert. Mommyblogging is bad because mommying is trivial? I don't really believe that. Mommyblogging is bad because I don't want to be "just" a mommyblogger? No one is "just" any one thing, and just because society has decided that what women do is "just" mommying, that doesn't mean I have to agree.

It's not just mommyblogging. I hear this construction in my head a lot. Sometimes it even comes out of my mouth.

I'm an internist, but I listen to my patients.

I'm an Ivy League graduate, but I'm not arrogant.

I'm an American, but I'm not obnoxious to people in other countries.

I'm straight, but I'm not homophobic.

I'm a Jew, but I'm not an irrational Zionist.

I hope all those statements are true in the main, and yet as I read them I realize that each one reveals my internal prejudices. When I try to set myself apart from others who share that identity, I'm labeling them. I'm reinforcing the idea that straight people are homophobic by definition, that Ivy Leaguers are arrogant, that internists don't listen, that Zionist Jews are irrational, that Americans are obnoxious. I'm othering my colleagues and my friends.

Time to reframe.

This is what one Ivy-League-educated, American, straight, married, Jewish, native New Yorker, mommyblogging internist looks like. And she's learning, again, the most important lesson of her life: never assume.

Making It All Come Out Even ~ by Jay

This week I've been a really good doctor. I've caught up on nearly all my messages and paperwork after vacation. I've squeezed patients in when they were sick and I didn't have appointments available. I've talked with the families of my hospice patients and my practice patients about prognosis. I've explained lab results and recommended immunizations and treated UTIs.

This week I've been good to myself. I went to the gym yesterday. I spent some time on the phone reconnecting with friends. I said "no" to my mother's last-minute request that we spend the weekend with her because we have plans for Saturday night that are important to me. I arranged those plans; Sam and I will go see a local theater production and go out to dinner. I finished the mystery I started at the end of vacation. I bought myself an iPhone mostly because I wanted it (although I have a bunch of rationalizations available for that purchase, too).

This week I've been a good daughter, despite saying "no" to the weekend. I helped my mother sort out some issues with her medical insurance. I spent 20 minutes on the phone with one of Mom's loonier friends who had some medical questions. I bought my mother a cute frog sculpture for her porch. I've enjoyed the phone calls and I've kept in touch.

This week I've been an pretty good wife. I haven't been home as much as usual, but Sam and I have had bits of time together each day, and we have that Saturday night to look forward to. I've been trying to do more of the dog care, because Sam told me before we left that he felt stuck with all of it. I've made lunch for our daughter each day and done an extra drop-off to give Sam a break, since I wasn't home on Monday night.

But this week I've been an absentee mother. I've been out an extra evening and distracted in the mornings. I tried to make up for it with a family dinner out last night and a picnic dinner at the pool tonight, but I have to admit that Sam and I talked mostly to each other during both meals, leaving our daughter kind of on her own. I haven't been home when she wanted to talk about color war, and I didn't pick her up at the bus stop today to hear that her team won.

Tonight my daughter didn't want to read stories. She didn't want me to read to her, either. She sat, silent and sad, not really pouting but clearly upset. Open-ended questions and comments about rudeness produced shrugs and the beginnings of tears. Finally I said "I haven't been around much this week. Are you upset with me?". Slow, mournful nod.

We didn't read stories tonight. We sat and cuddled instead, and we cried a little, and I heard her tell me that she wished we could have gone out by ourselves last night. I know that's partly because I take her to Friendly's, and Sam hates Friendly's. But it's also because she wants time alone with me. There are no available evenings any time soon for a Friendly's date, but tomorrow morning I don't start seeing patients until 9:00 AM. I'm supposed to go to a 7:30 meeting, but I can skip that. So I offered to take her out to breakfast - just the two of us - and then drive up directly up to camp rather than send her on the bus. Radiant smile and big hug before bed.

After I tucked her in, I realized I had the timing all wrong. My plan did not account for the 20 minute drive to camp and the 20 minutes from there to my office. I'll be at least 15 minutes late for my first patient.

So tomorrow I'll be a better mommy and a less considerate doctor. I'll see all my patients, and I'll take the time I need with each one. But I won't start right on time, like I usually do, and I'll probably run behind for the whole session. That's not a big deal for most docs, but it's really unusual for me. Doctor demerits, but Mommy brownie points. By the end of the week, it will all come out even.

So I'm Probably the Last Person to Find This ~ by Jay

Pandora radio.

I stumbled onto the Music Genome Project a while ago and found it fascinating, but apparently entirely academic. What would you do once you figured out how to classify music into relationships? Well, what you do is create Pandora Radio.

Just in case you haven't tried Pandora yet, I'll explain. You give Pandora the name of an artist or a song or even a combination of artists, and they create a radio station that streams music connected with the artists you entered. "Connected" means not just their music but music that is classified by the MGP as being similar to your choices. And you can provide feedback - I like this song; this isn't what I had in mind; don't play this one again for a month. Hit the "thumbs down" button and the song goes away immediately.

It's free. It's not file-sharing (Sam checked after I signed up); they have the rights to all the music they stream. The site says it's supported by ads but so far I haven't seen or heard any (I use Firefox with AdBlock Plus, so there may be ads on the site I've missed). And they have an app for the iPhone, so I can take it with me.

I'm loving this.

It's Not About the Gadgets ~ by Jay

In Britain, they call end-of-semester cramming "revision". Aside from that, parental hand-wringing looks pretty similar across the pond.

From a Times Online article

...his textbooks remained firmly closed in his bag while the laptop was open on his desk.
On the screen was some history/ physics/English document, but also his Facebook and iTunes pages. In his ears were the iPod plugs, playing back a podcast. And sometimes, just to fracture his concentration even further, he might have had a half-played video running on YouTube as well.

If you are the parent of a teenager, this vignette will be familiar. We each have our breaking points and one night during that exam period I reached mine. How, I wanted to know, as I scooped up the laptop and announced that I was confiscating it until further notice, could he be absorbing the finer points of photosynthesis and his French vocab if he treated his mind like a pogo stick?

Kids today.

Author Catherine O'Brien recalls her own youth, before the days of instant messaging and iPods, when exam revision meant "many hours sealed in my room away from the TV and other distractions, my head burrowed in books". I'm guessing Catherine O'Brien and I are close to the same age; she may even be younger than I am. But I never studied in silence. Couldn't do it. I spent my review hours with headphones on (admittedly, really big puffy ones attached to a stereo with an 8-track tape player) or talking on the phone or taking "study breaks" to read mystery novels. Guess I was just ahead of my time.

O'Brien isn't just concerned about her son; she's worried about the entire generation of "digital natives". Sure, kids who grow up plugged into technology can multitask, adapt to changes and synthesize information from valuable sources. But what do they do with that information? The article quotes an educator:

“The worrying view coming through is that students are lacking in reflective awareness,” she says. “Technology makes it easy for them to collate information, but not to analyse and understand it. Much of the evidence suggests that what is going on out there is quite superficial.”

Technology creates a superficial understanding of the world. No more losing onself in a text, allowing time for reflection and synthesis; now it's all about "power browsing", skimming from text to text, bouncing along like a stone skipping on a pond. And it's all Google's fault.

Except....what was it O'Brien's son was supposed to be doing at the beginning of the story? Memorizing French vocabulary and the process of photosynthesis and, we can assume, important dates in history. Call it review, call it revision, call it what you will. By any other name, it's still cramming for exams.

Learners need to reflect on their learning over time to build understanding. They need a chance to burrow deeply into a subject, to think and discuss and write and reflect again. Good teachers facilitate that kind of reflective learning. Individual process - what O'Brien describes as "absorbing oneself in a single book and allowing its themes to meander into the mind before forming considered judgments" - can also lead to deep understanding. I'm not convinced us old folks were all being absorbed in single books when we were in high school, though. We were - wait for it - cramming for exams.

It's not technology that inhibits deep understanding. iPods don't automatically make their owners superficial. It's the teaching that matters. Teaching to the test, asking our kids to stuff themselves full of vocabulary and dates and formulas and spit back the appropriate answers, rewards superficial understanding. Kids can memorize multiplication tables and bar graphs and Tudor genealogy without grasping mathematical concepts or historical complexity. My kid can read one textbook with one specific view about a topic, or she can skip around the internet and see what all sorts of people, all over the world, have written. Technology isn't the problem. Our antiquated, narrow-minded view of what constitutes educational rigor is far more dangerous than a teenager who is using IM while he's supposed to be studying.

Phew ~ by Jay

Yesterday I landed at the office at about 7:15 AM, ready to tackle the predictable piles of charts, lab results and messages. Worked steadily through that, started seeing patients at 8:30, finished at 4:00 PM, worked on more paperwork and notes and disability forms until 6:00, went to co-facilitate a teaching session until 8:30, went home and wrote notes again until 11:00 PM.

Today I had a meeting at 10:00 AM, went to the office from there, saw patients from 1:00 PM to 8:00 PM and then wrote my notes in the office - for a change - and arrived home about 10:30.

That should be the worst of it. The piles are pretty much gone. I have five home visits tomorrow but no meetings and I don't have to go the office; only five hours of patient visits for the rest of the week (2.5 on Thursday and 2.5 on Friday) and so far no home visits scheduled for Friday afternoon. Maybe I'll actually get to see my kid at some point this week for something other than breakfast. I did get the breathless phone report about color war tonight - swimming competition! relays! wheelbarrow races (she was the back end)! And the blue team is in FIRST PLACE, helped by the 500 points they received for being on time to lunch.

Of course, she also informed me this morning that she needs "more blue clothes, Mommy". She was not pleased when I told her that the blue clothes she'd worn so far could be washed and worn again later in the week. Ah, the trials of life during color war.

I Should Say More About This ~ by Jay

...but I still haven't done the Sunday puzzle.

Now that Orange has recovered from her faint, I'll go on.

En route to the puzzle this morning, I found this article in the New York Times Magazine. It's an excerpt from a forthcoming book by David Carr, the media columnist for the Times. Carr spent two years researching his own life, or more precisely the events leading up to and immediately following his entry into drug and alcohol rehab. Before rehab, Carr was using crack and had lost his job, his home and custody of his twin infant daughters. 18 years later, he finds himself sending those children off to college; he's married and has a third child with his wife as well as a job he loves. He decided to report on the journey as best he could as a journalist, not a memoirist.

So I should - and maybe I will - say more about the addiction story. But here's the part that jumped out at me

When a woman, any woman, has issues with substances, has kids out of wedlock and ends up struggling as a single parent, she is identified by many names: slut, loser, welfare mom, burden on society. Take those same circumstances and array them over a man, and he becomes a crown prince. See him doing that dad thing and, with a flick of the wrist, the mom thing too! Why is it that the same series of overt acts committed by a male becomes somehow ennobled?

Yes, why is that?

And We're Back! ~ by Jay

This was on the beach with two or three of its relatives the day we arrived. I immediately went back to the house and looked up first aid for jellyfish stings (thank God for high-speed internet connections on vacation). We saw no more jellies, but I was prepared.

Speaking of prepared, here's a partial list of what we took with us:

sheets
bath towels
beach towels
two laptops
one router
three beach chairs
two cellphones
one DVD player
an inadequate number of DVDs, according to our daughter
one pair of flip-flops
two pairs of Crocs
four kitchen knives
24 Ziploc bags in various sizes
1 iPod
4 digital cameras
chargers for cellphones, headsets, DVD player, iPod, AA batteries

Yes, partial list.

We had a great time. We came home today blissfully unaware of the continuing rush for the 3G iPhones - hey, it's been 10 days, we figured it was over - and managed to snag two anyway. The activation process was, um, challenging but now we're up and running. And I think it will solve our calendar-coordination problem.

It was good to be away, and it's good to be home.

iPhone or ilostmyprivacy? ~by Tigermom

So the iPhone has finally made a leap in technology that makes every physician all a twitter, in the old sense of the word. The iPhone now runs a gorgeous and practical version of a medical application called Epocrates.

Epocrates embodies what is great about technology. It makes technology let you be a better doctor and be more accessible to your patients in the here and now of an exam room. A doctor using Epocrates can look up any medication, brand or generic, find out adult dosing, pediatric dosing, contraindications, drug interactions, adverse reactions, even standard cost information, and my favorite, what size pills the medication comes in. In my office I can sit face to face with a patient and quickly look up any or all of this information on my PDA. I love it. My patients love it.

iPhone went from not previously compatible with Epocrates, to one major leap better. Now with an iPhone, Epocrates can show you not only what a pill looks like, in typical gorgeous apple graphics, but also can enable you to take a pill in front of you of unknown content and look up what it is. Got a green and white capsule in front of you? You can look it up by shape and color and presto you know your patient is holding a Prozac capsule.

I tend to be a late adopter of new technology, but I used the "iPhone-cannot-run-Epocrates" as a reason to stay way from this lustful object. But now it does run Epocrates. So I am sorely tempted.

But will technology put my patients' privacy at risk?

I am a private practice psychiatrist. I practice out of network of insurance companies. So if you come to see me, you can pay cash and can pretend like it never happened. And some of my patients do. I am my own secretary. I do my own scheduling with my patients directly onto a paper calendar. I keep paper charts that I keep locked in my home file cabinet, so even a theft in my office will not get the thief anyone's charts. I answer all my own phone calls. I do not use email with patients. I do my own word-processing. I password protect all documents twice over that are patient related. You get the idea.

But I struggle with the potential conveniences of technology. To email about scheduling. To have an electronic medical record that would save my sore hands at the end of the day and enable me to print out old records for a patient instead of standing at a copier for an hour. Would I spend more time with patients and family and less time filing and copying?

Doctors who are 5-10 years younger than I am do not have this struggle. In the same profession, in similar out of network practices, they use Google calendar for their practice scheduling. They use electronic medical records for charting. They have all their patient information on their smartphones.

With an iPhone I could keep my work calendar and all my patient information in one place. I could have instant access to a patient's phone number and next appointment information when I check my messages and get one from someone who forgets when they are due in next. I could have their pharmacy phone number programmed in to call in their run out medication and prevent withdrawal symptoms when they call me for the refill but forget to leave the pharmacy's phone number.

But that information would be on a server somewhere in cyberspace.

Does it matter?

Live-Blogging iPhone Purchase ~ by Jay

Yup, that's how long it's taking.

We bought one. We're waiting to buy the second one.

I guess blogging (from the store computer, natch) is the modern-day equivalent of thumb-twiddling.

Bush Wants to Go Out With a Bang, as Long as You're Not Getting One ~ by Jay

So let's say you're a woman, and just to make it simple let's say you're an adult. Over 25, even. Gainfully employed, happily partnered - to a man - married, even. So everyone would agree it's appropriate for you to have sex, right? Sure.

OK, so you want to be responsible. You've heard all the right-wing rhetoric about welfare mothers and irresponsible people having children they can't afford to raise. You don't want kids, at least not right now. You have student loans to pay off and a new job and you're not sure how much it's going to cost to heat the house next winter. So you want birth control, because you're a responsible adult. You have health insurance, and you go to your provider and ask for a prescription for the Pill. You have carefully avoided the Catholic-hospital-affiliated practice. Imagine your surprise, then, when the doctor refuses to prescribe oral contraception, telling you that she can't be party to abortion.

Abortion? You're not even pregnant. And you know that the Pill works by preventing ovulation, so how can that be abortion? And even if - IF - it prevented implantation of a fertilized ovum, how could THAT be abortion? Fertilized ova frequently fail to implant. It's kind of amazing that any of them actually do, when you think about it, but if preventing implantation is abortion, then all those fertilized ova that failed to implant spontaneously - were those miscarriages? Have you actually been pregnant every month?

You leave the office without the prescription you came for, but now you have a headache from trying to figure this out, so you won't be having sex anyway. Guess that will have to do for now.

The preceding scenario has been brought to you by the Health and Human Services Department of the Bush Administration, which in its ever-loving wisdom has proposed a new regulation affecting all medical facilities which receive federal funding (which would be every single facility that serves low-income women). If approved, this regulation will force hospitals and clinics to hire and retain nurses, doctors and pharmacists who refuse to participate in abortions no matter how they define abortion. The regulation specifically allows abortion to be defined as preventing implantation. So in one fell swoop they've accepted the right-wing nonsense about how the Pill works and forced hospitals to employ providers who will refuse to do their jobs.

Senators Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray have written a letter objecting to this proposal, which simultaneously increases my sadness about the outcome of the Democratic primary process and my admiration for both women.

Conversations With my Daughter and her Cousin ~ by Jay

Hey, cuz, let's have di - LUNCH! Ha! I almost called it dinner!

That's what they called lunch back in the day.

Conversations With my Daughter and Her Cousin ~ by Jay

Cousin: What's bypass surgery?

An operation where they help blood go around blocked arteries in the heart.

Cousin: That would be a problem, if the heart doesn't get enough blood.

That's right. If the heart doesn't get enough blood, then someone could have a heart attack.

Cousin: Then they might die.

Daughter: That's what you do, Mommy. You help people who are dying.

Yes.

Cousin: But you're not always successful. Although I bet you are most of the time.

Daughter: It's the trying that's important, Mommy.

Adventures in Housekeeping

Monday is my mommy day.

I get the kids dressed, breakfasted, off to the bus stop, then do several loads of laundry, pay bills, return all of my work phone calls, have a networking lunch, meet kids at the bus stop, take kids to extra curricular activity, pack lunches for the next day, fall into bed, then start it all over again tomorrow.

Except, my kids dressed themselves, made themselves breakfast, Tigerdad took them to the bus stop, and the laundry is sitting in the washer now at 11 PM still wet from the morning.

So in a fit of real domesticity, I thought I would set the oven to auto-clean tonight. I usually assume it will be self-explanatory how to set the thing to go then proceed to fluster with the controls and either figure it out or never get it. Tonight I decided to read the directions first.

Cool move. Looks easy. I notice something new though. The directions talk about a grease collector. Must be a feature of a different model.

Low and behold when I open the over door, looks like I have a grease collector. I pull it out.

Surprise! Grease starts spilling everywhere! Am I the only one surprised? We have lived here for 10 years.

Guarantee you Tigerdad doesn't know about the grease collector.

Maybe things will go better on my doctor day tomorrow.

Postcard ~ by Jay

Yeah, Mary was right and I can't keep my hands off the blog.

I'd forgotten how much I love the beach. Any beach. Any ocean. I can see it out the window now. Mmmm.

Traffic en route to the beach? Not so lovable. But worth it.

This is a first: Sam planned this vacation. We came up with the idea and location in conversation, and he looked up rentals on the 'net, found one, booked it, managed all the dealings with the real estate office, figured out how to get here, and took the morning off on Friday to get us packed and ready to go. I could get used to this.

Conversations with my kid ~by Tigermom

I'm going to miss kindergarten.

What are you going to miss about kindergarten?

Well, in kindergarten, the teachers read stories to you. And in first grade you have to read all the stories. And by eighth grade you have to know all the letters and the words and how to spell them all.

Well, I'm a grown up and I don't know how to spell all the words. There are even lots of words that I still don't know what they mean.

You don't know all the words and you're a grown up?

Nope. And I will always read stories to you.

When Giving Gives Back

I go to work. I drop my briefcase to have my hands ready to write and my ears open to listen for back-to-back sessions with patients. I listen to their tales of loss and coping and illness and hurting and resiliency and aching. I tear up inside when they cry. When I feel frustrated with them, I breathe deeply and think about their pain and why being stuck at this point may be necessary and helpful to them. I swell with pride when they courageously march through their challenges. I pick up the phone and have my hands ready to write and my ears open to listen for prescription refill requests and prior authorizations and forms to be filled out and letters to be faxed.

I come home. I drop my briefcase to have my arms free and my ears open for the Little Ones to run into my arms with warm priceless hugs and chatter about their adventures from their day or to have my hands free and my ears open for the Little Ones to run into my arms with warm priceless tears and chatter about their wounds from their day.

I prep their dinners and supervise evening activities. While juggling bedtimes I field phone calls from friends with ill relatives and from friends with professional challenges and from relatives with ill relatives and from relatives with professional challenges. I listen to Spouse sigh and know Spouse has had a full and challenging day. When Spouse is ready, I listen to those challenges.

Best Pal emails do I want to take a Stress Management Class for Professionals? I reply that I am too stressed to find the time.

Then my Mama emails me, gently checking in. How was my time with Spouse this weekend?

How lucky am I to have a gently checking in Mama? So lucky.

Introducing.... ~ by Jay

...our very first guest blogger!

You've loved her in the comments section. Now enjoy her voice for an entire post. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll learn something.

It's our dear friend TigerMom, dipping her toe in the blogging waters. I'll let her tell you what she thinks about herself, but I can't resist giving you my opinion. Every now and then TigerMom and I sneak away and have lunch together. Those hours spent in a brewpub halfway between her house and mine are sustaining for me. Another Jewish woman doc with kids about the age of my own and a sense of humor - how precious is that?

Be nice to her and we might talk her into getting her own blog!

Hurray! A Depressing Video! ~by MPJ

Since Jay is on vacation and (theoretically) not blogging, I feel it is incumbent upon me as the second (silent) woman blogging to take up the slack in her absence. So, I offer you a video (that came to me through a post by Sarahlynn at Yeah, but Houdini didn't have these hips) that made me really, really depressed. Things like this tend to paralyze me with grief rather than move me to action, but in case you're the opposite, here goes. I think I will continue not to watch cable news:

Hot Fun in the Summertime ~ by Jay

Today's the day we start seriously preparing for our vacation. We're renting a beach house with my brother-in-law and his family, so in addition to clothes we need to pack food, linens, beach toys, electronics and all sorts of other random stuff (need to add laundry detergent to the list...) The in-laws don't know about the blog so I won't be blogging while we're there and I won't have much time before we leave, so this is au revoir until about July 21st, when we will bring ourselves and a fair amount of sand back home.

Conversations With my Daughter ~ by Jay

Mommy, why don't you like Disney movies?

I don't like what they say about the female characters.

What do you mean?

In the princess movies, girls all have to look a certain way and act a certain way, and usually they get rescued by a boy. And even in the other movies, there's still a lot of that.

Not in High School Musical.

What about the baseball scene in High School Musical 2? I bet Gabriella would be a great baseball player. Why is it only the boys who play baseball? Why can't the girls play, too, instead of just watching the boys?

But that's real life, Mommy.

Conversations with Patients ~ by Jay

After our last visit, you were thinking of going to see the endocrinologist.

I never went.

Oh?

I figured I'd wait to see if the new dose of thyroid helped.

And?

I'm still tired.

Ah.

I just shouldn't be tired. All my friends can do stuff after their kids go to bed, but I can't do anything but watch TV.

Well, everyone's life is different, and everyone's kids are different. How much do you sleep?

About 7 hours a night.

Sounds like that's not enough.

What do you mean?

Can you try getting more sleep?

I don't know. I mean, I have the kids and my job and all the housework. And I wake up before the alarm goes off - doesn't that mean I'm getting enough sleep?

Might just mean you're conditioned to get up at that hour.

I just can't be this tired.

We've checked your blood count and your thyroid tests since last visit and they're all fine. Your exam is normal and your weight hasn't changed. Your last Pap smear was normal and your periods are regular. You have a four-year-old, an 18-month-old and a full-time job outside the house. I don't think it's pathological that you're tired. I think it's your body's way of telling you that you need more sleep.

Can't you give me a pill for that?

Things I Love, Computer Software Edition by Jay

iPhoto.

Sure, I had to pay for it this time. After shelling out for Leopard to start with, I was annoyed to discover that we had to go back and buy iLife to get the new versions of iPhoto and GarageBand. But now that I'm actually using iPhoto I so don't care about the money.

When I want to attach a picture to an Email or post one here, all I have to do is look at the dialog box in the "photos" folder and I can see the thumbnail images of all my pictures. I don't have to give them names or export them to other folders or keep opening and closing things to find the one I want.

Plus I can save groups of pictures as events, and as soon as we can figure out how to set up the date/time thingy on the camera, iPhoto will do that automatically.

Software that a) actually does what it claims to do and b) makes my life easier instead of more complicated. Gotta love it.

This Pleases Me ~ by Jay

Confirming my status as a materialist. And a lousy photographer.

It's a Sophie bag, from 1154 Lill in Chicago. Custom-designed by moi.

This is my second Lill bag but I suspect not my last. This bag is a better size for everyday use than my first one, and I will probably succumb to the urge to create another Sophie in less summery colors. Love, love, love the zippered inside pocket - perfect for keeping prescription pads handy but out of sight - and the organizing pouches on the inside which make it easy to lay hands on my Palm, cellphone, iPod and even a pen if I actually need to do something non-electronic. And it's big enough for a book.

It's all my mother's fault. She taught me to love crossword puzzles, so I went to the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, where I met Orange, who was carrying her Lill bag, and that was that.

Things I Could Do Without, Bumper Sticker Edition ~ by Jay

Overheard ~ by Jay

Discussion with a four-year-old at the poolside barbecue:

Why don't you like mustard?

It's yellow, and I don't eat yellow food.

Things I Never Thought I'd Say to My Mother ~ by Jay

If you can't talk to him about using a condom, you shouldn't be sleeping with him.

Things I Could Do Without ~ by Jay

My daughter commenting on the radio ad for the adult bookstore. This is a staple of the baseball game broadcasts because of course only men listen to sports on the radio.

She sounds funny, Mommy. Why does she talk that way?

Some women think that's how men want women to sound.

That's dumb.

Yes, it is, honey.

Even better: she can recite the tagline.

Oh, goody.

What I Love About the Internet ~ by Jay

When the thermometer is on its way up to 90 and it's wringing-wet-humid outside, I can read about winter in Australia.

I feel cooler already.