When we lived in New Jersey, I saw an OBGYN.  He was really cool, and pretty laid-back, and knowledgeable, and quite hot, to be honest.  He also was very forthcoming about his support of breastfeeding and shared that his wife nursed both their kids into their preschool years.  There were small things that bothered me… he was a bit dismissive of my desire for a drug-free birth with Lane.   His office gave out tons of formula coupons and samples, and nary a bit of anything breastfeeding-related.  His practice partner told me he had like a 90% episiotomy rate.  I stayed with them, and wrote a birth plan, and when I went into labor got incredibly lucky that the nurse-midwife that shared their hospital rotation was on-call, and between her and a pretty decent OB nurse I had a pretty great birth with Lane.

Then I got pregnant with Jake, and the stuff that I was able to get past at the OBGYN I was seeing just wasn’t passing muster any more.  On top of that, the nurse-midwife wasn’t even in their on-call rotation anymore.  So I went out on a giant limb, and switched practices at somewhere around 20 weeks pregnant.  The practice I switched to was a group of all women practitioners – 4 OBGYNS and 4 midwives.  When pregnant, you got to pick whether you saw the OBGYNs or midwives for your prenatal care and for your birth.  They were on a rotation, so you couldn’t be sure who would attend your birth.  But I went with the midwives, and they were all so lovely, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed no matter who attended my birth.  They also delivered at a different hospital than my old practice, so that was something new, too, but the hospital had a good reputation and had nice, huge rooms, so it didn’t seem too scary.

Midwife Wendy ended up being on-call that night.  The birth went great, my OB nurses were amazing, and the whole experience was very warm and intimate and just about perfect.

And then we moved, and now we live an hour and a half away from that perfect situation.  There are only two hospitals in my county… one has a decent reputation, and one has a great reputation, but they are a Catholic hospital and won’t allow procedures like tubal ligations (aka tubes tied) to be performed in their hospital (not a procedure I’m really interested in, but it just burns my bustle when choices are refused like that.)

The idea of a homebirth was always intriguing to me, but while I know I would be a good candidate for a home birth, there’s just something a little scary about being far away from a hospital when it all goes down (the closest is a 15 minute car ride).  In my mind, the ideal place for giving birth was a birthing center associated with (or at least close to) a hospital, but I was having a hard time finding anyone who knew of anything like that around here.  I found one in the Bronx, which isn’t obscenely far but does involve crossing the Tappan Zee Bridge which is never a guaranteed fast process.

And all this time, my body has been acting wonky.  It wasn’t until Jake was 18 months old (just over a year ago) that I got my period back, but since then it’s come with alarming frequency.  The average is 18 days apart, but it’s often as fast as 16 days.  A couple cycles stretched out to 21 or 22 days, but even that is way short than my relatively clockwork 27 days from before I had Lane.  (Between Lane and Jake I had an IUD, and then once it was removed only had two periods before I was pregnant with Jake.)  I’m sure it’s probably because I’m not ovulating.  So at least we don’t have to worry much about birth control, but when you’re bleeding 6 out of every 16 days, sex isn’t exactly on the forefront of your mind.

So finally after 3 16-day cycles in a row, I decided enough was enough and got on the ball.  I figured I really needed to be seen, especially if another baby was going to be in the cards.  I got recommendations galore for a OBGYN practice with a couple midwives that was closeby, so I called for an appointment.  But, even with the assurance I had something not right going on, they couldn’t get me in until February.  Um, no.  Back to the drawing board.

Then the magic of the internet saved the day.  I found what looked like a great option.  A practice of three midwives, one with a doctorate in nursing.  *They* run the practice, and have two OBs that work with them.  They deliver at a birthing center that just opened a few years ago, attached to one of the best hospitals in the state.  And while it’s not in *my* state, at least I don’t have to cross a bridge to get there, and it’s still only 35 minutes away.  It’s also pretty close to where Frank works, which if I do get pregnant again will make it easy for him to meet me for prenatal appointments.

I called today to make an appointment, fearing the worst.  Well, first, the phone was answered by a real person, not a “press 2 to make an appointment” recording.  Then I briefly explained what was going on and asked when I could get in.  I could have gotten in even sooner, but I have an appointment for 10 days from now.  The only very minor issue is that they are out-of-network for all insurances, so I have to pay at time of service and then be reimbursed.  But, we have a high deductible PPO with a health saving account, so I end up paying out of the health savings account for most stuff anyway.  But, to balance that, she said they keep their fees very reasonable, and gave me a couple of very reasonable-sounding examples.  So I’ll go, and see how it is, and keep my fingers crossed that it’s as good a fit and I feel like it might be.  Because frankly, if it’s not, I am so not looking forward to going back to the ol’ drawing board.

I’ve noticed something with other parents.  Now, I hate to generalize, but it does seem exceedingly common.  What’s with having snacks available to kids every single minute of the day?  Jake and I attend this open gym that our town runs.  Basically, every weekday they use one of their community center gymnasiums, fill it with toddler/preschooler-appropriate toys, and let parents and kids have the run of it for two hours.  Most people aren’t there for the full two hours, maybe an hour, hour and a half tops.  Nearly every single kid there has snacks openly available to them.  They walk around with bags of Goldfish.  They nosh on pretzel sticks, and apple wedges, and Cheerios.  Two babysitters were there with three kids between them, and they literally had a buffet set up for the kids they were watching – four or five different snack choices, plus a drink for each kid.  Then there’s the other moms that follow the kids around as they play and pop food in the kids’ mouths as they’re playing.

You may have guessed, but this is nowhere near my modus operandi.  I make sure my kids get something in their bellies in the a.m., around lunchtime-ish, and at dinnertime.  Snacks are happily supplied if a kid says they’re hungry (unless a mealtime is imminent and that food is forthcoming shortly).  Sometimes I keep snacks with me if the kids say they are hungry, but often I don’t.  When I do have food with me, it only comes out if our time away from home unexpectedly encroaches on a mealtime, and the kids say they’re hungry.  It is rare for me to offer a preemptive snack, unless I realize we’ve missed a meal.

I hate to feel all judgmental about it, but gosh, it just really seems like some parents are still stuck on that infant feeding schedule, thinking that their kid will starve if they don’t eat every hour.

I waffled on the idea for the last couple days, as I am staunchly a work-it-out-yourself sort of parent most of the time.

But Lane’s struggling.  Emotionally, physically, socially, with the estrangement from the girl that I think was her best friend at school before this.  Lane has a strong personality, so I imagined from the beginning that she might be a polarizing figure — the girl that other girls love, and/or hate.  I sort of mentally prepared myself for dealing with that.  I guess I didn’t predict Lane’s reaction to it.  Playing sick, changing her preferences, begging me not to send her to school.  Her heart’s aching, and so is mine.

So I emailed her teacher.  Just in a friendly heads-up sort of way, and seeing if she’d be open to doing a bit of mediation with them.  I’m still not sure it’s the right thing to do, and we’ll see how the teacher responds.

Ugh.

Oh, sigh.

Now, let me remind you.  My daughter is five.  She just started kindergarten.  She watches Sesame Street and Dora.  She thinks farts are hilarious.  She was dumb enough to cut her own hair five months ago.

Yet, I am already dealing with a full-on case of girl-angst-drama. 

Before last week, Lane loved school.  Couldn’t get enough of it.  Rejoiced at getting an earlier bedtime so she’d be well-rested for school.

Then this week, something changed.  It was harder to get her out of bed.  She didn’t feel good.  She didn’t want to go to school.  Tonight, there were tears when she pleaded with me to not make her go to school tomorrow. 

Time to get to the bottom of things.

I’d gleaned a couple days ago that she and her friend (I’ll call her Katie) were mad at each other over something.  But when she told me, Lane didn’t seem very affected by it.  So when she had her minor freakout this evening, I dove deeper.  The story I was finally able to extract was that Katie hit her last week, and Lane told on her, and Katie got mad because Lane told on her, and declared they weren’t friends any more. 

Gosh, I hate this.  I was not good at being a girl through school.  I gravitated toward the jock girls, as we always seemed to be slightly more immune to the drama.  I was just never good at navigating through that social minefield.  And now, I have to teach my daughter the ways of this nonsensical world?!?  Ugh.

I did my best, and I think I gave her decent advice.  Well, first, I gave her a huge hug and thanked her for trusting me with the whole story, and now I’m her mom and it’s my job to be her friend and help her and protect her, so she can always tell me this stuff.  I told her that I totally understood that she would be mad that Katie hit her, because nobody likes to be hit.  However, even though Katie did something wrong, maybe Lane could have handled it differently too instead of telling the teacher right away.   Lane’s also a pretty big tattle-tale at home, too, and 95% of the time I make her work it out herself.  Tell your brother you don’t like to be hit.  Don’t play with him if he’s not nice to you.  Blah blah blah.  I told her tonight that while she wasn’t wrong to tell her teacher, that maybe she could have done something differently.  Maybe she could have asked Katie not to hit, because Lane doesn’t like to be hit.  There was a little more talking, a couple rephrasings, a couple examples, a little talk about how maybe she go about making amends with Katie, who before this incident was arguably Lane’s best friend at school and the only one she talked about having playdates with.

And, sigh, again.  I feel so ill-equipped with dealing with this crapola.  I want Lane to be better equipped to deal with all this angst and drama. 

Or maybe I can just encourage her to be a jock. 

Seriously though, I’d totally take some advice here.   Any thoughts?  Any good books to read?  I need help.  I’ve considered shooting an email off to the teacher, just to give her a heads-up about what’s going on between these girls… but how much is helpful to a teacher, and how much is needless meddling?  Would she want to help mediate the situation, or prefer to let the girls work it out themselves? 

Help.

Soooooo frustrated right now.

I do a little on-the-side consulting for my old company.  They have quarterly reports that need to be put together, and sometimes need a little extra help at crunch time.  I work from home, and make more per hour than I did as a full time employee.  The work is only very occasional, but it’s interesting enough to not be mind-numbing, and it provides me a nice little paycheck once in awhile.  It is, all in all, a nearly-perfect setup.

Except for the vendor that manages my payroll.  My old company has a policy of not making direct payments to contractors as much as they can; I guess it’s a situation ripe for fraud and embezzlement and whatnot.  So, if you are going to do contract work for them, even if you aren’t in a firm, you have to go through their sourcing firm, which gets a cut of your pay and manages your payroll.  Now, I negotiated it so that they upped my hourly pay such that I was still getting the rate to which we originally agreed, without feeling like I’m losing money to this sourcing firm, so that’s a good thing.  But seriously, for the money they’ve made off of me for basically printing a paycheck and a W2, I could stand a little better customer service.

First off, they do everything by email.  EVERYTHING.  Most of the time that’s fine, because their automatic emails that tell me my timecard was approved are clear and concise.

The problem is when I have a problem — which given my limited experience with this firm, has happened too much.  First, my direct deposit never got set up, as it turns out, because of a typo on the direct deposit form (my typo).  But — I never heard that they had a problem with the form.  I just started getting checks instead of direct deposits…. which I didn’t care much about anyway, because I only work about one week a quarter, so going to the bank every three months isn’t a huge burden.   And if you refuse direct deposit, you agree to pay a lost check fee of $35 if a check gets lost. 

And then a check got lost.  But I never refused direct deposit.  And I cannot even describe the hoops I’m being made to jump through to get paid for work I did three months ago, and not end up getting docked the stupid fee, and how it has been implied every way from Sunday that it is completely my fault that this happened.  I’m not saying I’m blameless, but a big part for this firm is the way they communicate problems.

It’s all by email.  And you know, if your email is anything like my email, you get a crapload of emails to sort through every day.  So, while the firm’s standard “we got your timecard” emails are clear and concise and are easily identifiable, the emails you get from them when there’s an issue are anything but.  Mainly, the problem is in how the emails appear in my inbox.  They don’t say the firm’s name in the sender information or the subject.  The sender is the name of the analyst who sent the email, so some random name I’ve never seen or heard before.  And the subject is to the effect of “RE: Claim #3X55QR9″.  If you see an email from a name you have never known to mean anything to you, with a cryptic subject line, well… if you’re anything like me, you think it’s spam.  BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT SPAM LOOKS LIKE.  They send these emails to you when you might be expecting them, like if you call to have a form sent to you, and they send them when you’re not expecting any sort of email from them at all, like, say, after you make a single typo on your direct deposit application and they need you to fix it.

This firm doesn’t seem to see this as a problem.  And when, today, I called to request that I not get emails when there are issues, the gal I’m talking to, ON THE PHONE, said “Well, then, how would we be able to let you know there’s an issue?”  Yeah, you see how you’re talking into that gadget on your head?  It’s useful for myriad applications.

So anyway, *I* have to go and fax them about three different forms, and they HAVE to be faxed.  Can’t email them, which I think is pretty ironic.  And I don’t have a fax machine.  So I have to use the stupid annoying free fax online applications, or walk over to my in-laws’ and use their fax machine. 

Argh.  Argh argh argh.

As a bit of background, I have to tell you about something fairly mundane… a while back, my dad got married, as you may remember.  My new stepmom had recently bought a new washer/dryer set, and when she moved from her house into my dad’s house, she brought the washer & dryer with them.  They thus had an extra washer and dryer.  Our new house came with a washer and dryer, but the washer was a low-end model and the dryer was older than dirt.  So, a couple months ago when we visited my dad in Buffalo, we brought Frank’s uncle’s trailer and brought my dad’s washer and dryer back with us.  We didn’t install them right away because we had a bunch of other house stuff going on and there was no urgent need.

Then our older-than-dirt dryer stopped drying, and we felt it fortuitous we had a replacement in the garage.  And since we were taking the dryer out, we figured we’d put the newer washer in, too.  And since we were moving the old appliances out, we figured we’d paint the room and put down new vinyl tile to cover the funky old vinyl tile that was in there.

We moved the washer and dryer out, and discovered that the drywall behind the washer and dryer was all busted up and moldy and rotting out, and the insulation behind it was moldy.  So, the painting/flooring/move in new appliances project became a drywall/insulation/painting/flooring/move in new appliances project.

Then we decided since we were doing everything else anyway, we might as well go ahead and fix the completely funky plumbing that existed in there.  (Our laundry room is also our utility room, and the boiler and hot water heater also reside there.)  For example, because of the way the plumbing was, with the expansion tank on the pipe where the water comes out of the water heater instead of on the line where the water goes in, turning on cold water in our house would create a pressure disparity in the cold water pipe and hot water would siphon back from the hot water tank into the cold water pipes and after 10 seconds of cold water, we’d get a  minute of hot water out of the cold water tap.  So, so, so annoying.  And on top of all that, the utility sink in there was ridiculously wobbly and just stained and beat up, so we decided we’d put a new one in.

So, the drywall/insulation/painting/flooring/move in new appliances project became a plumbing/drywall/insulation/painting/flooring/move in new appliances project.

Somewhere in there, Frank and his dad decided to replace the window in the room, too.  Luckily they’ve further decided that the window can wait until the rest of the room is done.

We have therefore spent the last two weeks in various states of upheaval.  We had no water in the house at all for 24 hours while all the plumbing got worked on.  Then, the hot water heater that got moved out of the room stayed out of the room until the drywall and painting and flooring all got done, so we had no hot water for at least a week (but luckily we’ve been able to shower at my in-laws’ next door). 

But I helped my father-in-law with the drywall and insulation (and proudly did all the insulation myself).  I did most of the painting.  Frank and I worked together on the new floor.  The hot water tank got reinstalled.  The utility sink is assembled and ready to be installed.  After all that work and countless necessary trips to Home Depot to get all the random stuff we needed along the way, the laundry room was finally ready for a washer and dryer.

And then, Frank and his dad went to put in the washer and dryer… and realized that the dryer is an electric dryer.  Which was not the type of dryer it was replacing.  I had assumed my dad had a gas dryer, because there’s a gas line right behind his washer and dryer.  But, no.  I’m not quite sure why my husband didn’t realize my dad’s dryer was electric, since he helped my dad load it into the trailer.  You’d think him noticing the wonky plug and lack of a gas pipe would lead to some brilliant conclusion.  I seems I had said it was a gas dryer, and he holds me in high enough esteem that even with evidence to the contrary, he just took my word for it.  Sweet man, but that didn’t help us on Sunday when we couldn’t put the dryer in because we don’t have one of those 240-volt plugs, or the spare amperage, to install an electric dryer.

Which led, somewhat happily I must admit, to the majority of Sunday picking out the new front-load washer and dryer we wanted, and the first part of Monday actually buying them.  It’s a model that was JUST discontinued by the manufacturer…. but only in white.  They still sell a spiffy blue color of the exact same model, and we’d originally picked out those blue ones… but finding the white ones on sale for like $500 less for the set sort of made the need for spiffy blue seem not so important.   We already bought the pedestals, and the washer and dryer will be delivered and installed tomorrow.

I.  cannot.  wait.  another.  minute.

Does anyone remember the talk about my dad’s dog, Ginger, who had a cancerous tumor in her mouth, and the vet was suggesting to my dad they remove part of her jaw to prolong her life?  To give a quick reminder, it was January 2008.  They did a biopsy, during which they removed as much of the lump as they could. 

My dad, with input from my brother and me, decided he would wait-and-see.  She was already ten years old (a good age for a Lab) and he didn’t want to disfigure her in a selfish attempt to prolong her life.

Well.

It’s coming in on two years since her little lumpectomy.  They never cut off part of her jaw, and never needed to.  The lump never came back.  She’s turning 12 this week, and aside from a little arthritis and hearing loss, is doing pretty well.

Good girl.