Going dark

OK, I just looked at my calendar, and my one-week media fast (on my list) was supposed to start yesterday. Whoops.

In the past 36 hours I have watched tv, posted to this blog, browsed through facebook, lingered over email, played Mario Kart on the Wii, spent way too much time on Pinterest (which I've only just discovered...where have I been?), Googled dinner party themes and recipes, and played Jewel Quest on my phone. So I apparently have begun my media fast with an unusually media-rich day and a half.

Yeah.

So I guess my media fast is starting right now and running through next Monday at noon. You won't be hearing from me for a week, but that's not really that unusual. :) If you absolutely must contact me to tell me how fabulous my blood-donation post was, you'll have to send me a note by carrier pigeon or something.

Aaaaaaaaaand....go.

Oh, Positive!

It took me almost 40 years to get up my nerve to give blood, apparently. I'm not sure why. Needles don't thrill me, but I'm not terrified of them, either. And people need blood. Mine isn't the magic universal donor O negative type (which I remember because of many episodes of ER: "2 units of O neg! Stat!"), but it's O positive, which is still pretty helpful. It seems like the kind of good-girl thing that would have been right up my alley all along. For whatever reason, though, last week marked my first blood donation.

And it was........no big deal.

As I was lying on the cot, squeezing the little bike-handle-thinger I was supposed to squeeze, I mused for a while about what I had been waiting for. Maybe it was just that since I'd never done it, my tendency to stay away from the unknown had kept me from making that first donation.

So here, for your benefit, gentle reader, I will detail the events of my first blood donation experience in order to remove one more obstacle from your ability to do this particular variety of civic good.

Arrival: I had made an appointment online (through the New York Blood Center, which works in NJ as well) for a blood drive on the other side of town, but I got the sense when I arrived that I could just as easily have walked right in. I'm glad I made the appointment, though, for my own sake. It got my butt off the couch and out the door. On arrival I was directed to a set of tables with cardboard privacy screens and papers to fill out. The paperwork was pretty easy, consisting mostly of questions I know the answers to, such as whether I have ever worked as a prostitute. (I have not, in case you're wondering.)

Screening: I waited, clutching my filled-out triplicate forms, until my name was called for my medical screening. I sat down behind another privacy-screened table with a woman I found absolutely fascinating. She was older, but not old, and seemed really tough. Serious and lean and sinewy, she did her job with a subdued, civil severity that made me wonder about her: what is her backstory? To whom is she precious? What brought her here? I was nervous, and when I'm nervous I babble, so I refrained from asking her any personal questions at all lest I fall immediately into invasiveness. She clarified a couple of answers on my sheet (guessing correctly that the "other people's blood" I'd come in contact with over the last year belonged to my accident-prone children), got some vital statistics, pricked my finger (which hardly hurt at all thanks to the little spring-loaded gizmo she used), took my blood pressure, and sent me back to the waiting area.

Donating: After maybe 10 minutes I was called into the back room to make my deposit. As soon as I walked in, a very pleasant nurse asked me to show her my veins, so I stretched out my arms, knowing what reaction I would get. "Oh, yeah," she said. "You sit right down." That's right, people. I have great veins. Somehow this feels like an accomplishment, and I will admit to feeling a little bit smug about it, as if I had anything at all to do with it.

The nurse seemed like she had probably done this about a billion times, which I found comforting, since before my last c-section my hand served as the guinea pig for a tentative student's very first IV insertion. That was not so fun. This professional, though, had it down cold. She gave me the squeezy thing which looked like it had been lifted from a kid's bike handlebar and warned me that I would feel a little pinch. I told her I'd be looking away, and she was not offended.

And that's what it was: a little pinch. A little bit pinchier, maybe, than when a doctor takes blood to test for whatever, but not by a lot. It made me wince a tiny bit, but then it was over, and I reasoned that the opportunity to help save someone's life was worth the pinch. The rest of the visit didn't hurt at all.

I lay on the cot for about 10 minutes, obediently squeezing the thinger every 10 seconds or so. During this interval the quiet, serious woman who had done my screening, having finished her shift at the privacy-shrouded tables, came in to switch places with someone else. As they spoke I discovered something significant about her.

She was a man.

Oops.

I quickly tried to replay our entire conversation in my head, and I don't think I said anything that would have betrayed my error. PRAISE THE LORD that I didn't give in to the temptation to ask her...sorry, him...any personal questions.

Having dodged that bullet, I soon heard a beeping noise that apparently meant I was done. My friend the nurse removed the needle without causing any pain at all. I held a cotton ball over the spot where it had been, and I assessed my own physical condition: no dizziness, no nausea, nothing. They thanked me cheerfully and walked me out to the snack table, where I was instructed to sit for 15 minutes before going home. I didn't really feel weak, but I don't often get told that I can sit quietly for 15 minutes at a table that has fruit juice, pretzels, and Lorna Doone cookies (!!), so I obliged.

And that was it. Done and done.

In closing, I have the following advice to offer you, fellow first-timer:

1. Eat before you go. They'll ask. They probably didn't need to know that I had a cheese sandwich, an apple, and a banana, but I'm thorough.
2. Don't wear a skirt. I made that mistake, and it didn't bother me in the least, but they had to take extra measures (sheet-like thing) to ensure my modesty when I was getting up and down from the cot.
3. Maybe avoid unnecessary aspirin in the days preceding the donation? The form asked whether I'd had any aspirin in the previous 72 hours. I don't know whether that would have disqualified me, but I remember thinking that would have been a good thing to know ahead of time.
   
4. Don't ask gender-specific questions of your screener. She may be a man.

Other than that, though, you should be good. Go and save a life.

One final note: I've been wanting an iPod touch, and the NY Blood Center has a rewards program where you can earn all manner of nifty stuff including an iPod touch. I've been doing the math, and I figure if I donate every time I'm eligible (every 56 days), I'll totally have an iPod touch by April of 2024. Awesome.

Too Few Books and a Magical Dilemma

I just wanted to report that I've finished my 8 books. It doesn't feel like all that much of an accomplishment, honestly...the goal of 8 feels appallingly low. All my life I've read voraciously. I majored in English and took more than twice as many literature classes in college as I was required to. I taught high school English for five years and loved immersing myself in great literary works. Now? When I have a minute of respite from managing little ones and the endless picking-up-the-house cycle, I tend not to sit down with a book. It's easier to turn off my brain and turn on the tv or lose myself on Facebook.

So I think the value of this one was less in the books themselves and more in the wake-up call it gives me. I don't want to become a person who doesn't really read.

Anyhow, the last one was Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Joy's been asking me to read it for months because I won't let her at it until I've finished it. She finally wore me down. I'd read the first chapter, and I finished the rest in one long evening. Joy snatched it up the next morning and had it read before bedtime, I think. Now we've both read the first two, and she's already on me to preview the third.

I realize the Harry Potter debate is SO ten years ago. It's been about a decade since much of the Christian community in America sent up an indignant outcry about these novels and their use of witchcraft and sorcery. But my kid is nine now, so we have to start making a call on this stuff. For those of you who might care, here's my two cents.

They're really good books. They're imaginative and engaging, with fantastic, round characters, gripping plotlines, and a masterfully whimsical narrative voice. Yes, they have magic in them. But so do the Lord of the Rings novels, and the Chronicles of Narnia, and most fairy tales, and just about every Disney movie. If you categorically dismiss any story with magic in it, you may lose more than you bargained for.

I get that the setting of these novels is closer to normal, modern life than most of the tales mentioned above. Your 11-year-old is not likely to take up orc-hunting or try to turn a pumpkin into a coach. But it seems to me that a kid who is able to read and understand a Harry Potter novel is a kid who is old enough to talk about it with you. And if your kid can't grasp the difference between a fictional world where magic can be good or evil, and our world, where God asks us not to seek powers that don't come from Him, then I think you have a bigger problem than Harry Potter. I'm just saying.

I hear that the books get progressively darker as they go on. Certainly the second was darker than the first. I've warned Joy that I'm not going to let her tear through them all right away...she may need to sort of age into them. And if they get crazy dark, then we'll set them aside. But right now, I'm ok with them.

Having said that, I can respect the decision some parents are making to make the books unavailable to their kids. Certainly we all have to figure out where to draw the line, and I understand why many might draw it here. What frustrated me ten years ago was not a measured decision to stay away but the knee-jerk reactions coming from people who hadn't bothered to think it through on their own. That kind of bandwagon-hopping contributes to the depressing reputation that Christians have in this nation. And it makes our task (serving the people around us and seeking to share the really good news of Jesus's love with them) a whole lot harder.

I hadn't planned to write all this stuff, and if I don't quit now I'll reread it a million times and take half of it out. Whether or not that would be a good idea, I don't have time for it now. So for once you get me talking off the top of my head. :)

Hope you're all having a magically wonderful day!

Run Bike Run

I'm officially a duathlete! Today I completed the Vassar Brothers Medical Center Duathlon in Lagrangeville, NY: 1-mile run, 14-mile bike, 3-mile run. I didn't exactly complete it with flying colors, but I finished still breathing and able to walk without assistance, so...score! No photos (if I can find official ones online I'll post them), because I thought I was going to be alone, and what would I do with the camera while I raced?

But as it turned out, I wasn't alone! You guys, my mom came with me! (If you don't get the significance of that, you may need to check my previous post. Don't worry. It's pretty short.) I wouldn't have had the nerve to ask her to get up with me at 4:45 a.m., but she didn't want me doing this on my own, so she volunteered to come along. I can't even tell you how much she calmed my nerves. There is a super-short list of people in my life whose very presence makes me feel like everything is going to be ok. My mom is on that list.

Despite road closures, highways obscured by darkness and low clouds, an impressive swarm of hungry mosquitoes, and an unfamiliar registration and preparation process, I was checked in and ready to go in plenty of time. This left me a little time to make some observations about the rest of the 400+ competitors:

• Performance fabric. Nearly everyone there (literally everyone but me, I think) was wearing some space-age fabric or another, designed to "breathe," wick away moisture, and possibly travel through time. What was I wearing? A Coke t-shirt I bought at Target.
• Impressive stretching regimens. I saw people doing some crazy stuff: some with legs twisted every which way, some bending backward way farther than seemed necessary, some lying on their backs with people pushing on their legs. It got my mom all excited. "Do you need me to push on your legs? I could push on your legs!" I assured her that I was ok.
• Toned glutes. I hope this isn't inappropriate, but it's an observation I couldn't help but make, what with all the spandex around. These runner/biker types have some perky butts. This aspect of my physique would have been enough to betray me as a wannabe had it not been for the Coke t-shirt, which I chose because it is long enough to cover the evidence.

Before long, though, I had to line up with everyone else, quell the butterflies, and start with the weird electronic sound that I'm thankful wasn't a gun or air horn.

The 1-mile run was a little unsettling. I can run a mile without too much difficulty, but I've never attempted a race on my own before, and I had some trouble pacing myself. The adrenaline didn't help. (Am I going too fast I'm going too fast I should slow down Now everyone's passing me I should speed up Am I going too fast...) I forgot to start my watch when I left, so I have no idea how fast I ended up going, but I was maybe third to last.

I found the whole idea of the "transition" intimidating, but my mediocrity in the first run worked to my advantage: nearly all the bikes but mine were already gone. :) I still felt unsettled, but off I went.

The bike portion consisted of two laps on a 7-mile loop. I struggled along at the end of the pack, flustered and stressed, until about halfway through my first loop. At that point some volunteers along the road started cheering for me and asserting that I was "doing awesome." This obvious lie made me laugh, which made them laugh, and just then the fastest competitors began to fly by me on their second lap. I laughed again, reminded myself that I wasn't going to get anywhere CLOSE to winning this thing, and relaxed. I started to enjoy the wind in my face, the feeling of freedom, and the chance to push my comfort zone a little.

I finished the 14 miles in a little more than an hour, racked my bike, took a quick drink, started the three mile run...and almost quit right there. My legs felt like lead. I've never experienced anything like it. I'm sure my already not-picture-perfect gait looked more like a waddle until I loosened up about 1/2 mile later, but it did eventually wear off.

And so, just under two hours after my flustered start, I dragged my sweaty, aching self across the finish line. Everything hurt: my entire rib cage (why?), my neck, my hips...my thighs were pretty seriously done. Almost everyone had finished and headed over to the bagels and protein shakes, and the volunteers had started winding up the bright orange tape marking the course. But there was my mom, jumping up and down and waving her hands over her head, shouting, "Yay, Joci! Go, Joci!"

I love my mom.

I finished ahead of maybe 10 people. Probably they had leg cramps or mechanical issues with their bikes that overpowered the magic of their performance fabrics.

So it's done! I have to tell you...I thought this item on my list wasn't going to happen. It's kind of a thrill. :)

What's next?

Sixth Grade Stomachache

The title of this post is a term that I purloined from a friend because I love it. It refers to that feeling you got in the pit of your pre-adolescent belly when you had a math test you hadn't studied for, or had to give your first public speech, or braved the first day of middle school. A vague, unsettling anxiety that puts a little lump in your throat and makes you sort of want your mom. Or chocolate. But mostly your mom.

I currently have a raging case of sixth grade stomachache stemming from the imminence of the duathlon I'm scheduled to be in tomorrow.

You guys, I'm scared. Really, actually frightened--like with an elevated heart rate and everything.

I don't know how to get there. Leaving at 5 am will barely give me enough time. I've never raced anyone on my bike, and truth be told I haven't even ridden it very much lately. And by lately I mean in the last 10 years. Mark and I took a 20 mile ride a couple of weeks ago, but that was at a pretty leisurely pace. I can run four miles, but with a 14 mile bike ride in between??

I was looking at last year's finish times, and I'm realizing that it's very, very possible that I will come in dead last.

Beyond that, I have NO idea what kind of etiquette may be involved in this sort of thing.

And I'm going all by myself.

If it weren't for the $80, I'd SO be backing out right now.

I'm trying to combat the 6th grade stomachache with logic. Who cares if I finish last? Who cares if I blow a tire and can't finish? Who cares if I do something totally humiliating? Who's going to know? What do I care what 500 total strangers think of me? And this is one of the main reasons I wrote this list in the first place, right? To push the boundaries of my comfort zone? To do things that scare me? Right? Right?

It's not working. But it's too late to turn back now.

Maybe my mom's not busy tomorrow.

Canvassing (plus a bonus)

We're deeply in the throes of potty training around here (I'm determined that Jack will poop in the potty before preschool starts tomorrow), but here's a quickie for you with a bunch of pics. I've been on a bunch of really fun, polished mommy-blogs looking for craft ideas, and I found a great idea for tape-resist canvases. There's big, bare spot next to our stairs that I had been thinking about filling with some canvases anyway, so I figured this could serve a dual purpose. I didn't promise the kids they'd be displayed that centrally, though, in case of aesthetic disaster. ("Hey, that's GREAT! Wouldn't it look fantastic on the inside of your closet door?")

So a trek to the craft store ensued, wherein my youngest, for whom I could not find a cart, became drunk with freedom and ran wild all over the store. We managed to gather all our supplies, but by the time we got to checkout (where I had to just hold him) he had dissolved into writhing and screaming to the point where I became that mom. The one everyone is looking at with varying degrees of amusement or disapproval. When this happened with my middle one a few years ago (in this very store...paint fumes, maybe?) I was a whole lot more upset about it. I'm a tiny bit more seasoned now and have decided that anyone giving me a judgmental stare can just...well, it doesn't bother me as much anymore.

The histrionics had subsided by the time we got home, so we took all our stuff outside and got started. Joy decided to apply her tape in a diamond grid, while Will went for classic stripes.
Jack wanted his in a striking minimalist pattern evoking stark tree limbs. And he wanted all subsequent pieces directly on top of the first ones.
I had chosen some paint colors at the store, but I let them choose a few more from the paints we had on hand, so there was plenty of variety. While I was trying in vain to open the plastic seal on a new tube of green for Will, Jack said, "Mommy, look! I painting!" I looked over to find he had emptied about a third of a bottle of bright red into a big puddley pile on his canvas.

"Wow, Jack! Look how red it is! Good job," I chirped loudly as I raced to scoop up some of the excess. In the end we mostly just spread it around his canvas.
They painted for a LONG TIME. Like, probably 45 minutes, which in my world is an eternity. And in the end, the red on Jack's canvas became a subtle layer of added depth to his mostly-brown finished composition. He may or may not be some kind of prodigy.
We let them dry for a little while in the sun. The one with the swirly stuff in the middle is mine.
Once they were dry we pulled the tape off to reveal our finished masterpieces.
Finally, I used a small roller to paint the edges black (Joy did her own edges and did a lovely job) and hung them on the wall. I'm thrilled with them.
I figure that if I keep buying 14x18 canvases with those 40% off craft store coupons, we could do something new every few months and have a ready-made place to display them. Of course, in a couple of years we'll have to rent a storage unit to accommodate all the canvases I can't part with, but that will be another blog post entirely. :)

BONUS: Joy and I put together a few felt flowers on 1" brooch pins. (Got the idea here.) We have the materials to make more, but for starters we put together these three for her "winter purse."
Just one more and I can cross the crafting off my list!