Swamp log

Lunchtime is for Mothers

2011-05-05T14:36:00.001-07:00

I got a new lunch kit.

It's great, like a bento box for grownups with seals in the compartments so the liquids don't get everything disgusting.

I ate some of it before I thought to take a picture.

I hiked over to the Long Center to sit in the grass and look at this view.

I also found this.

The keys werent great but the sound was all right for a piano that's been outside for a month.

So I played the piano. Outside. In the cool breeze of a dry Texas spring. And for once, took a peaceful breath.

Eliot Gets the Ball

2010-12-03T12:09:00.000-08:00

So we have this awesome friend and care provider Katie Holmes (ok, not THE Katie Holmes but in our book, totally THE Katie). She cares for Eliot during the day and plays a bitchin' fiddle. Also, she sends pictures. I guess today Eliot inched his way over to a ball for the first time.

I have another friend who cares for kids during the day. She used to talk about how the baby would be walking all over the house and after the weekend Working Mom would show up crowing about the baby's first steps. This friend would allow the mother to think that she had witnessed the first steps without disenchanting her. Which breaks my heart a little. But we have pictures.

Starry Nights Bed and Breakfast

2010-11-24T08:50:00.000-08:00

To attempt to forget about my heinous night last night, which involved pulling two complaining children away from a Thanksgiving meal in progress and throwing them into the car, only to have said car freak out and break down in South Austin (karma for losing my cool during meal?) where I had to simultaneously breastfeed and teach older child to blow bubbles in bubblegum in a Target parking lot for an hour while Wilson got lost repeatedly trying to pick us up, I will remember our retreat to the Starry Nights bed and breakfast in Wimberley last weekend.

It was a little 2- bedroom cabin, perfectly clean. Here's the gate and the gate-opener, and the much-looked-forward-to yard and treehouse -

The reason we were there was to play at Matila's wedding, so of course we needed a new pink sequiny dress.

Tried to catch some baby smiles on the phone, but that didn't work...

My favorite part, even more than the nature trail and cute little dangerous boat, was the fire pit....

from which you literally could see this, for your sunset.

Aah. Now isn't that better, self?

Garlic!

2010-07-02T12:48:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I've actually grown enough garlic personally to braid it, although my parents had me do it when I was small. It's a little screwy, but I like it.

we laughed, we sang, we got a lung infection

2010-06-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

This last weekend the family hauled out to Kerrville Folk Festival 2010, whereupon I played with the settings on my camera while utterly failing to take any pictures of my own family.

I thought this would be a fabulous album cover, actually. As though we ever go on the road anymore!

Thanks to being so pregnant, I fell asleep at 11pm mostly, considered a big time-waster at Kerrville. One thing that kept us going were trips to the river (this is the 'blurry' setting on the camera, apparently).

It also takes great pictures of other people's children...

This is Judy's take on the popular rock-stacking pastime at Kerrville.

We usually enjoy the earlier acts on the main stage even more than the later ones, since you get to hear people you never have heard before. In this case, it will seem new every time, since I have absolutely no idea who this is. The point is to get you a nice vantage point of the stage in the daytime, because....

This picture of the Indigo Girls' set in the nighttime is completely unviewable. But trust me! They were there! At my music festival! Did I mention I had an Indigo Girls cover band in college???? I saw my friend Mustang on the stage taking pictures and generally rubbing elbows, and while I was jealous for a minute, I have to admit that had that been me I probably would have just drooled and said something unintelligible, so it was safer to stay in the audience.

It was so sad that poor Sparrow woke up with a lung infection - small bit of pneumonia - on Sunday morning, precipitating a hellish ride back into town to the urgent care clinic. Poor little bird. But at least her momma is cool enough to have taken her to her first IG concert at 4, even if you have to suffer a bit from neglect.

No really, she's doing great now.

on the road again

2010-05-28T08:14:00.000-07:00

Seemed like with the new baby coming and all, it might be time to revitalize this blog to keep up with family and friends. We'll see how I do - apparently I have a talent for dropping projects like this one when I get busy. For today's adventure, I took the train to the office. Since we can't seem to get out of the house on time this morning or any morning, I wound up waiting here for about 45 minutes.

Your two options are, you can sit, or you can have shade/rain protection.

The train itself was lovely, nice smooth ride and good voyeur opportunities into people's backyards. A bus connection later I made it into the office. Total ride - 50 minutes. Not bad. Total time from house with waiting time - an hour and a half. Ick.

OK, so my office is a cubicle. In fact, the entire floor is a rabbit's warren of cubicles.

(Shot taken standing on my chair)

There's something so 9-5-with-Lily-Tomlin about it. The retro look of the pictures comes from an iPhone app called Hipstamatic, and I think it adds to the atmosphere of this post. Now I need to go out and get some cocktail dresses. Oh, wait, I have to have this baby first.

Round you out with a picture of the grandchild, mom, with her friend at kiddie acres:

All right then.

Austin Ball Moss

2008-07-07T14:27:00.000-07:00

How. Cool. Is. That.

An explanation (courtesy of every internet site that mentions it):

Ball moss (Tillandsia recurvata) is common in Austin but rare outside of Austin. It may be that the city ‘heat island effect’ allows it to grown in Austin. This is a member of the bromeliad family, closely related to Spanish moss.

It is an epiphyte, not a parasite. There is no evidence at all that it harms trees, contrary to local myth. Indeed, since it is an epiphyte, it is difficult to see how it would harm trees. The myth probably arises from the tendency of sick and dying trees to have conspicuously large ball moss populations. This is likely due to the lack of new (hence ball moss-free) growth and also to increased light levels within the canopy of an unhealthy tree.

the cat bowl

2008-06-27T08:13:00.000-07:00

This NY Times article really set my mind spinning this morning. It's about our total inability to get rid of heirloom furniture, be it ever so beat-up or uncomfortable. A few pieces of our own furniture leaped to mind... then a few more... and then I realized: almost every damn thing I own is a piece of heirloom furniture, and it's almost all beat to hell.

This has two main causes: (1) DH and I are poor and used to be more poor and we never buy furniture and (2) both of our parents homes are (or were) home to many of these items, and they didn't want them either.

Exhibit 1: The Haviland China ("The molds were broken in WWII!!). Worse than furniture and worth more. Bequested by my Great-Aunt Mary on her deathbed for when I married, which prompted guffaws from me at the time but lo and behold I am now married and my mother wasted no time in passing down the Fated Dishware of Imminent Guilt. Please note: I am the only person in my family with a toddler. I have no business owning this. So naturally, it's in the garage. I've never used it, not in 5 years. By the time I can use it (read: no kids in the house) I'll be morally obligated to pass it down to my own newly married daughter, who will never use it either.

Exhibit 2: The Wierd Cuplike Mexican Leather Chairs of Discomfort. Now more appropriately called the Cracked Decaying Porch Chairs of Discomfort. I keep swearing one day when I'm rich I will get them 're-done'. Whatev. As long as they don't end up like the Great-Grandmother Red Chair (left out in the rain) and Settee (Dog Bed).

Exhibit 3: The Easter Bar (topped by The Shed Painting). All right, this one's pretty cool, but will keep us from ever living in an apartment. It's huge and used mostly as a short open closet. It's just good to explain to people that, because I'm from Louisiana, it was a perfectly appropriate end-of-Lent gift in 1969. Happy Easter, here's a bar.

The list goes on. Our complicated and heavy bed from Wilson's grandmother, now with the varnish chewed off by wee Sparrow. Our complicated and rickety (but pricey) crib with varnish chewed off by same child (new, but automatic heirloom thanks to preciousness and the fact that Wilson's mother gifted it). The couch, every chair, the vanity, the chopping block, the cat bowl (ok, jk): in short, nearly every piece of furniture in the entire house.

Which makes a trip to Ikea an impossibility regardless of winning the lottery.

It Rained! And there was a Party!

2008-06-22T10:11:00.001-07:00

Finally on Saturday we had a brief thunderstorm. It sent a rolling, dusty river down the street in front of our house, and today the grass is electric green. Perhaps it will stay that way for a few days before dulling to the 101-degree beige.

Hey, at least it goes with the house.

In a spirit of celebration we drove out to K&J's house, or perhaps we should refer to it as the Compound. With 5 children, they've committed to a sprawling extension that is currently a frame on a slab, the smell of which reminds me of my father's carpentry days and childhood in general. As J put it, "I'm going to have teenagers in the house for the next 18 years". So if they build the ultimate den, the theory goes that the teenagers will hang out at the Compound instead of places unknown. Either way, it's a beautiful piece of work and sends my own house lust roaring out of my chest. One day, one day.

The end result of a long party (15 kids! 10 pounds of fetuccini! A dragon cake! 8 pounds of tiramisu! And only then do you get the margaritas!) was an exhausted princess that was still awake after 1 a.m.

And today, a total meltdown by 11 a.m. and a very blessedly early nap. Which is where I'm headed now.

high and dry

2008-06-19T08:13:00.000-07:00

One of the stranger things about my new office is that, even though it has not rained here for more than a month, I look directly at two fountains pushing water very high into the sky. 3 stories high. I'm not complaining, because i rather like the reminder that water exists somewhere here. You can't see it on the surface.

It makes my swamp-raised body nervous and jittery to dry out. I think the lack of water affects us on a deeply biological level, makes us always on the lookout for sources. I learn a lot about this issue being around so many geologists and hydrogeologists and whatnot; the four precipitation projection models based on climate are deeply disturbing. They're all over the place, but go in the same general direction: way, way down.

Could they put in a pipeline over to new orleans?

We're letting the grass go crunchy over at the house. How long, I wonder, before we have only bare dirt? The neighbors mostly water. So the bunny seems to be ok, and gets his nightly carrot regardless of rainfall or drought.

to illustrate...

2008-06-08T18:30:00.001-07:00

As requested, here are some pictures of the new house. From the front, you can appreciate the standard middle-class tan/beige aesthetic. We slapped an earth flag out there but really, there's only so much that can be done. Good tree though.

Here's the interior. Note the gas-burning fireplace... and my desperate attempts at putting anything at all with any color in it into the House of Beige. Beige, and pink carpet.

But-- here's the thing-- I can stand in the kitchen....

And watch the Bird in the backyard while I make dinner. That's worth something.

Note the swingset J's family hauled into the backyard with great effort. Angels, all of them. And if we get bored, we can always play with the Yard Bunny...

more pics on the Flickr stream (left).

back inaction

2008-06-04T14:03:00.000-07:00

Finally, I'm back online at home. And oh, how it hurts me to not bore you with the heartwrenching details of our 3-week AT&T hoedown. The forgetfulness! The broken modems! The guys in silos in India making small talk about 'Friends'! Bet you wish I had poorer self-control.

And, ok, let's talk about how 'home' no longer means Louisiana. Rather, it means the far northwest suburbs of Austin, TX. My FIL lovingly calls it An Actual Neighborhood, which is sweet of him, by which he means Not In The Ghetto. And I must admit, it's nice not being right behind a carwash. I do miss having a booty-shaking soundtrack for everything i do (i.e. laundry, chopping celery) but we can forego that for:

-a community pool
-3 preschools within walking distance
-library right around the corner
-protected yard that the Bird can play in at will without my fearing her escape
-not one, not two, but three friends with children in the same neighborhood! Which means built-in babysitters!

The house is bland, but the scenario's pretty great. We can always dress it up with flowers. Which my daughter picks. Out of neighbors' yards. While we're tricycling down actual sidewalks. So you see, I don't even have to garden.

saying bye bye to the old office

2008-05-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

So today was the last day in my old office. Makes me kind of sad-- I always felt like it was my teenage bedroom with a door that actually locked if I didn't want to be bothered. Of course, I never got up to anything nearly as interesting as i might have in a locked bedroom as a teenager... the scuttlebutt around campus is that others have though... oh, i digress.

I suppose packing up one's work used to consist of packing actual books into actual boxes. Now we have a bit of that, but mostly it consists of downloading and uploading massive whispery amounts of data and doing mysterious privacy-enhancing things to your computer. Takes days. I mean, I barely even have file folders. I wish it was all heavier so that I could get some actual exercise.

For years I've been in a cavernous, narrow cinderblock room with flourescent lighting. The far wall all windows. Big tree that I had to entrust to Mike, who immediately let it slip that he was going to [hack it down to a mere stub] cut it back. Building AC outside the door whirring, old dairy alarm going off like an air siren ever 30 minutes, emergency phone broadcasting a dial tone outside the window. These are days. I'll miss it.

Guess you can get used to anything.

Things I've learned from my Mom

2008-05-12T12:05:00.001-07:00

(a response from my friend Brook's blog, which she may allow me to link in a few days)

Quiet time is neccessary. Wear high heels. Ditto lipstick. Stronger coffee is better. Everyone is less interesting than your family. If you sound completely sure/confident, it doesn't matter if you aren't. Playing the piano is the gateway to all music. You may as well just get over it. Set the table for every meal, and this includes the salt and pepper shakers. Put flowers on the table. Let other people do the yard work on mother's day while you watch, drink a bloody mary, and laugh at them.

my earth day speech

2008-04-22T11:59:00.001-07:00

This is the earth day speech I gave on campus today. Since I’m leaving for UT soon, I actually got to say what I thought for a change.

Good Morning, and Happy Earth Day! It’s a lovely day. You know, it’s not often that we have the opportunity in our busy lives to set aside some time to reflect upon our impact on the planet. Today is a day for that, a moment for everyone to reflect on where we are and were we’re going. The first Earth Day was only a little more than 35 years ago. The terrible issues of the day, then, were pollution, loss of wild space, extinction and sprawl. What we wouldn’t give today for the simplicity of those worries. I’ve taught a lot of you, students, about the environmental issues we face. You’ve told me why you care. But I’m going to tell you a little bit today about why I care, and I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned in the last six years about you and about this area. I’ll tell you a little bit about the problems we face, but I want to talk more about solutions. We are at an amazingly hopeful time in our state, I promise you. You might not believe me, but it’s true.

My name is Thais Perkins, and I’m a teacher and science communications specialist here at Southeastern. I grew up on the northshore in Washington Parish on the first organic farm in the area, among the cypress tupelo swamps and pinelands that grow so green and beautiful in our subtropical climate. After my education and some traveling time, I came back to Louisiana about 6 years ago to work on coastal issues. As I’m sure many of you are aware, coastal Louisiana loses about a football field of land every 30 minutes. It’s one of the worst ecological disasters in the world, and mostly nobody talks about it. They talk about it more after Hurricane Katrina, but it still isn’t really on the radar for most people.

As a scientist, it’s a fascinating problem to work with. As someone who grew up here, it’s a terrible tragedy. As a teacher, it’s the focus of many classes and a motivator for many students. I’ve spent years of my life waist-deep in mud, mosquitos and snakes, both literally and as a good metaphor for trying to punch through the layers of bureaucracy, history, and culture that makes our problems so difficult to deal with here in Louisiana. It’s made me something of an activist, which is what you get when you combine a teacher and a researcher that spends every day dealing with awful truths and trying to get people to listen, and getting either no response or active hostility in return. It builds up over time.

Everyone seems to think that people in Louisiana don’t care. I’m going to tell you why they’re wrong. But first, let’s talk about the problems we face and supposedly don’t care about.

Many of you already know that Louisiana loses a football field of land every 30 minutes. The entire coast looks like lace, and it sinks. Our levees protect us from storms and floods but also kill the swamps and marshes trapped behind them, which vanish into open water. We now know, also, about sea level rise due to global warming.

You’re familiar with the global warming CO2 graph now—how through all the ups and downs of climate cycles throughout earth’s history, the CO2 never rose above about 280 ppm. Now it is at 380 ppm and is projected to reach 600ppm in the next 45 years if we don’t change our energy use patterns. Basic bell jar physics tells us extra CO2 means extra heat in the atmosphere. If a 100 ppm difference in CO2 is the difference between a warm period and an ice age, what is a 300 ppm difference going to look like? The answer is, we have no idea. We do know that the waters will rise.

If you know a little bit about water, you know heated water expands. That gives us at least a little sea level rise. If you know a little more about the ice sheets over Antarctica and Greenland, you know they displace more water as they melt, which they are doing far, far faster than anyone though was possible. It looks like the Arctic ice cap will vanish in the summer by 2013, or five years from now.

We think there will be around a meter, or 3 feet, of sea level rise in the short term, meaning in the next century or two. It doesn’t stop there, but it’s enough, because coastal Louisiana is completely flat. So now we’re looking at losing the entire coast of Louisiana below Baton Rouge in the next 100 years just due to the oceans expanding as they warm.

That’s just sea level rise. Other effects of climate change are actually worse. It’s one thing to move out of the way of rising seas, but it is another thing to face food shortages due to drought and lack of fresh water due to saltwater intrusion into reservoirs. Humans may adapt quickly, but wildlife is slow to adapt, and a crash of the food chain thanks to the 6^th great extinction in world history looms over us like the elephant in the room.

But this was supposed to be an optimistic talk.

As Michael Pollan recently said, anyone who has spent a lot of time thinking about climate change, or anyone who has seen “An Inconvenient Truth” knows that the scariest part is not when everything floods cataclysmically but is at the end, when the big life changing advice is to…. Change a lightbulb. I mean, come on. The world is about to end and all we’re supposed to do is go to the store? It’s like after the world trade center fell to the ground, and our biggest sacrifice, we were told, was to keep shopping. The United States is responsible for a third of all CO2 emissions. Louisiana is responsible for an entire percentage point. That’s right; 1% of all the world’s CO2 is produced right here. I believe that means we have a third of the responsibility to make things better.

For the last year and a half, I’ve been schlepping around Louisiana giving a talk on climate change. It’s the same one given by former vice president Al Gore. It’s called the Climate Project, and it’s a group of 1000 people reaching out to educate people about climate change. Like I told you before, I’m not trained as an activist, and it didn’t sit well with me to tell people how they ought to behave. Scientists don’t do that.

And even though I grew up here, I thought the same as everyone else, that Louisiana people wouldn’t care about this, or would see it as an affront to their way of life or their politics. That going to community groups to talk to them about climate change would at best be mildly tolerated and then easily dismissed.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

I have at this point given around 20 climate change talks. Two of them were here at the university on a Monday night. Each of those drew more than 200 people. At the first one, we ran out of room. In every room I was in, the response was the same. While I overprepared to answer what I thought would be criticism, ready for those who might be ready to throw brickbats, the audience – you—asked amazingly well-informed questions about what to do. You wanted to know what action to take. How to make things better. Who could you talk to, what group could you join, what could you do??

I was totally unprepared to handle this. I was armed to wrestle a critic to the ground, but I still don’t know how to harness this kind of energy. I’m still unsure about it, but I know that getting organized is the first step, and so I have an email list over there on the table for you to sign if you’d like to stay in touch about it. Getting back to the point, though, I couldn’t tell a room full of 200 people just to change to flourescent lightbulbs (although, in their defense, it’s a great idea and you should go home right now and do it if you haven’t already—if everyone in the US did that, it would save the same amount of CO2 as removing a million cars from the road).

So what can you do? There are easy first steps to take, like the lightbulb thing and removing the roof rack from your car and energy efficient appliances, sometimes called a clothesline, and turning things off when you don’t use them.

But we call this process of healing the earth, changing our mindsets, and changing the way we live the green revolution. And the green revolution may actually be, in the end, a real revolution. And real revolutions take work. And they are frequently dangerous. What would a real green revolution look like?

For one, you’d have to move close to work and school. No more long drives. You have to bike and you have to walk and a 20-minute drive to the lakefront would be a once-in-a-while occasion. On the bright side, everyone would weigh a little less. Communities would be more important to us, as we are well aware of every time a hurricane knocks out the power. We would be in touch in a more real way, face to face instead of inside hermetically sealed car interiors. This has all kinds of implications that are good for the human soul.

You’d have to be aware of your food and where it comes from and yes, you would have to eat less meat. You would have to buy food that came from local farms instead of food produced in Peru that used jet fuel to get here and you’d have to fork over the extra money for organic food because the fossil fuel make to produce toxic pesticides is its own environmental sin. You might have to actually do without certain foods when they are out of season. But Louisiana people are good cooks. We can hold our own.

More cheaply and more importantly, you might tear up your lawn and install a garden. During world war II, victory gardens produced more than 40% of all the produce consumed nationally. We need to do it again. As fossil fuels become more scarce, food is only getting more expensive, and a fuel crisis might make food hard to come by. In Louisiana, not limited by soil quality or water or hard freezes, we can do it very well. Most vegetables go ape in this climate. Your produce would be organic and carbon-emission-free for the price of some seeds and fertilizer. Of course, we wouldn’t buy fertilizer because we would be composting all of our kitchen scraps and using them in the garden.

Recycling is another thing; this is one of the areas where the government must step in for the better. It’s difficult to recycle goods when there is no pickup, so in addition to consuming less we must put the pressure on our city governments to provide recycling services. In other places, your city payment pays for a bag of trash and limitless recycling, while extra bags of trash are an extra charge. Some cities pay for their recycling programs by collecting yard and kitchen waste, composting it, and selling the compost. We could do that here, but it takes a larger effort.

Which brings me to my final point: to really cut our carbon emissions, to seriously make a dent in our global warming projections, it’s going to take a bigger effort than we can make individually. You must get involved. You must stay in touch with one another and when a city calls a meeting to discuss planning or recycling options, you must show up in force and demand real change. Elected officials will frequently choose the most conservative path for fear of offending the wrong parties. It is up to us to provide the pressure to be more brave. Again, as I said, we are starting a mailing list for the northshore greens, called northshore greens, over there on the table that I hope you will sign in order to stay informed of what is happening and share what you know.

It is a very exciting time for Louisiana. The first action that the new governor Bobby Jindal took when he stepped into office was to issue an executive order that all state government would be greened, meaning codes and buildings and behaviours of all branches of state government would have to from this point forward take energy efficiency and CO2 emissions seriously.

Southeastern Louisiana University is on the brink of hiring their first recycling coordinator and green campus coordinator and if you’re interested in the job, talk to me in a minute. Other green jobs are springing up. The mayors of Hammond and Ponchatoula are expressing interest in recycling and greening behaviour for the first time in a long while and if you’re interested in that, speak to me in a minute.

Yesterday the EPA announced that for the first time ever, the greenhouse gas emissions of the United States actually dropped by 1.1 percent. They said it was because gas prices are making people drive less, we use more renewables like wind and solar, and, very ironically, it was because the winters were warmer. But it is wonderful news, and we can see here that we can make a difference.

The last thing I want to say to you is that they seriously underestimate the people of Louisiana. The most avid conservationist I’ve ever met is an old Cajun who organizes people in the swamp to plant 20,000 cypress trees every spring, watches them die, and then does it again just in case the diversion goes in this year. He’s done it every year for the last 10 years. That’s hope. Hunters and fishermen are natural conservationists. They share the love of the land and care for it in a way nobody else can.

Growing up on the northshore set my palate for green and beautiful open spaces as a child, something that has been harder to fill as I’ve gotten older. It’s a taste I know many of the students here share, having grown up fishing and hunting in the swamps and forests around here. You’ve told me so in classes.

You are the last generation born on the northshore before the explosion of business and housing developments. You’ve seen the land cleared. You’ve seen green turned into cement and wetlands drained. You remember a time when nobody thought much about global warming because we didn’t yet feel its effects. You remember hunting grounds where now there is only open water. You’ve seen forests cut over that you played in as kids. You are the first generation witness to climate change. You are the last generation to know the planet as it was Before. None of this will be true for your children, they’ll grow up in a world that is already disrupted and they may not know the difference. But you: you remember. You remember and you will always remember and it is up to your generation and mine to sound the alarm and make it real.

Now I want you to, after you sign the northshore green mailing list, take the afternoon off if you can, go out to a park somewhere and take off your shoes and walk around in the grass. Feel the breeze, smell the air, get calm. And get ready.

Thank you, and happy earth day.

sparrow bike tickle

2008-03-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

That'll teach me to hit the snooze button

2008-02-20T07:18:00.000-08:00

Ten minutes. I was neglecting my motherly duties for ten minutes, while Sparrow (or so i thought) ate the breakfast her daddy had lovingly laid out for her. But nooooooooooo. All hell's got to break loose.

My favorite part is the makeup-covered hot water knob and the soaked tissue. Because, you know, she really was thinking of covering her tracks on this one.

the new normal

2008-01-23T07:21:00.001-08:00

All during the Christmas holidays we took our spare time for granted, buzzing around Louisiana and Texas and getting childhood sicknesses, yes, but sleeping until 8 in the morning and napping with regularity. Even my 9-5 job wasn’t, really, and the glut of time in which to cook meals and watch videos made us shiftless and cranky.

No longer. Wilson’s student teaching now gets him up at the nighttime hour of 5:50am. He is to report to school at 7a.m.—a little earlier for the prime parking spot—not to return home until 6:00pm. For many people, this is normal. For us it resembles slave driving. We are total time weenies, used to student schedules. Just last week we were all home by 4pm, and spent an hour painting with our two-year-old before considering dinner. From what I understand about normal American schedules, this is unheard of. Also, Sparrow is used to seeing her Daddy in the morning… this morning, once I dragged out of bed, she happily jumped to Wilson’s side of the bed and ripped back the covers to find--- puzzlement. “Where’s Daddy”? she said in that cute little parrot voice.

All I can say is, thank goodness my own job allows me to get Sparrow to school at 9, pick her up at 4, organize dinner and have a nice wifely ~~manic grin~~ smile on my face when he comes through the door.

At least the money’s good. Ha. Student teaching is UNPAID. Teaching in general is starting to look like the bum’s rush.

the elephants are trumpeting

2007-11-13T08:36:00.000-08:00

So a circus set up a block from my house. then, late at night on sunday, i heard the strangest moaning noise... the elephants were trumpeting.

Now, elephants are a major indicator of change for me. They may even be my ungainly grey totem animal. The first time I saw them at 7 they set me up for a lifetime of deep questioning of my own perceptions, and at 22 they portended independence and faith in my own abilities.

Now they're visiting me again.

What happens next??

4th anniversary today!

2007-10-04T12:38:00.000-07:00

Sounds tiny next to some people (mom), but we're pretty happy. We had a lovely lunch (oy-- two glasses of wine in the middle of the day is hard to push through) and took the afternoon mostly off while Sparrow was in school. It's a great compromise when paying for a babysitter and dinner seems a little out of range.

Oh, did I mention my anniversary gift? TWO PLAYS. Evita in Baton Rouge on Saturday and then a college performance of Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. I've been bugging that boy to take me out to a musical for, like, four years! He wins!

What $100 buys you in groceries these days

2007-09-30T12:10:00.000-07:00

And just for fun, Sparrow has a brand-new swing....

Happy Nineteenth Amendment Day

2007-08-27T09:09:00.000-07:00

see, you didn't believe me, but it's true

2007-08-24T18:51:00.001-07:00

we found this amazingly big wasp on our porch.

This is the land of way prehistoric insects. After a time you expect the lubbers. But giant bloodsucking wasps? Ok, I'm a biologist and I know they don't suck your blood but this thing looks like it was created by Disneyland engineers for a ride, a ride entitled "Bad Nightmares". I don't even want to know what would happen if you touched it.

In other news, wilson finished the gate

which, for the uninformed, was part of the larger fence project

As we seem to always be building fences... and mending them... searching for the metaphor but it's really too late in the evening for me to be clever. The gate only took wilson one weekend and we are all severely impressed and heaping praise upon the manliness of this action.

one last thing: it took 'em all summer but the tomato plants finally bore tomatoes. I'm so proud. Sparrow likes to pick them off of the plants and eat them, which because they are organic and only coated with Ponchatoula's finest mosquito ditch spray I let her, and this leads to the kind of behavior we witnessed at the fruit stand today whereupon she grabbed not one but several tomatoes and other fruits from people's baskets and I wound up paying for several items with large bites taken out of them. They thought she was soooo cute. And profitable, I suppose.

We also had our first adjective-noun statement today: "Long Noodle".

Hundreds get naked on glacier to expose climate change

2007-08-20T08:37:00.000-07:00

Spencer Tunick + global warming awareness = something even I wouldn't do

Us as Simpsons

2007-08-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

Because everyone is doing it.

Go on. You know you want to.
Say it.
Is that supposed to look like us?

Action.

2007-08-13T11:01:00.000-07:00

Tropical Depression Four

Grand Isle: Equal parts fun and hell

2007-08-09T13:27:00.000-07:00

See Grand Isle pics!

Don't have time for a long post on this actually, but the highlights of the trip included (1) forgetting our popup camper key and having to get a locksmith for $30 (2) not understanding why the air conditioner wouldn't work until you circumvented the blown extension cord (3) Sparrow FALLING OUT OF THE CAMPER in the middle of the night onto the asphalt and nearly killing herself (4) Wilson hurling his own body out of the camper after her ("I broke my arm! I broke my arm!" No he didn't) (5) crabbin' (6) mosquitos (7) beautiful morning swims in the ocean followed on monday morning by a nice shower and (8) on tuesday morning a total lack of water, meaning we packed up in the 100 degree heat humidity and mosquitos while we were still covered in oceansmack and made the three-hour drive home.

But the crabs were great.

ditch monkeys

2007-08-01T11:20:00.000-07:00

That's what I'm going to call the Ponchatoula city council until they get the car wash effluent to drain from the ditch. Ditch Monkeys. Hmmm. Now that's sounding like a good band name.

Anyway, remember the flooded ditch, TWO YEARS AGO? In case this hasn't stayed on your radar, here it is:

Gross, eh? Anyway, this thing is right in front of our house and hasn't been dry for TWO YEARS. Initially the Ditch Monkeys said they'd help out, dredged the ditch below the culverts (see? this pic was taken right afterwards, note the level of the water and the level of the hole) thereby ensuring it would stay full of car wash crap, and made fun of us for choosing to live near a commercial area (as though a young family could do much else with a limited income, ditch monkeys).

Came Katrina, we dropped it-- figured everyone was too busy. But now that there has been an election and the newest Ditch Monkey, having promised a culvert, now tell us that even though it's city land the landowners are responsible for purchasing and installing culverts and fill, we're a little angrier.

Surely, I claimed, this must be illegal. The Ditch Monkeys say it's not toxic and anyway, it's permitted. Then they said it drains directly untreated into Ponchatoula Creek.

Well.

A short google search turns up that "car detritus is one of the major nonpoint sources of heavy metals, oil and grease, and other components, such as rubber. NWRI concluded that road runoff contains potential, confirmed, or severe toxicity in three-fifths of all samples" and that soap from car washes in particular destroy the mucus layer surrounding fish that enable them to live... not to mention the heavy metals in turtle wax and armor-all.

I didn't know that. I didn't know the car wash was not only obnoxious for us but also killing poor, defenseless little fish. Neither did the state DEQ, turns out, but they do now...

Everybody hide inside

2007-07-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

Aerial spraying to begin tonight in Ponchatoula, Hammond

My favorite bits:

“If you want to go inside when you hear the plane overhead, that’s fine. It’s probably always advisable to avoid the spray if possible,” Wallette said.

and

Last week’s tests of the district’s current ground spray material at the LSU Hammond Research Station are inconclusive.

As people have noted, there are plenty of mosquitos nonetheless. What we're missing are the dragonflies and honeybees.

It's here! It's finished! Ok, nearly.

2007-07-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

http://www.selu.edu/lessonsonthelake

I've been working on a web version of a teacher's education guide to estuary and wetland issues and the Lake Pontchartrain Basin in particular... It's called Lessons on the Lake, and it's a set of curricula developed by the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation.

Since I've been working on it for a solid year, you can imagine how excited I am that it's online. We're doing some final edits now and then we'll be printing 1500 CDs to mail out to teachers for offline access. At which point I'll find the rest of the errors and feel completely embarrassed, maybe not being able to emerge from the house for months even, which is why if anyone wants to see me in the near future they should go to the site and tell me anything they find wrong with it.

Did she nap?

2007-07-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

Monday-- in crib from 11-1, no napping.
Tuesday-- yes, from 12-2
Wednesday-- in crib by noon, but took i think an hour for her to fall asleep
Thursday-- yes, from 12-2:30! (nice big park trip that morning)
Today... not so much. Down at 11:45, and here it is an hour later, and still no nap.

Incidentally, it's the same at night-- she'll be in that crib for an hour or more just howling at the moon, trying out her voice, hiding pacifiers in her pillowcase and then shrieking because she wants another (like we're that dumb... ok, this one took a few days to figure out).

Nearly 2 and deciding she's done with naps. This doesn't bode well.

Galveston 2007

2007-07-26T09:30:00.001-07:00

see more photos from our trip....

No. Way.

2007-07-25T11:32:00.000-07:00

Although why this should be hard to believe, I'm sure I don't know. I'll be interested in seeing more about this.

BBC: W's grandpappy planned fascist coup of USA

at least we never had to deal with these in the Maurepas

2007-07-24T08:22:00.001-07:00

A Movable Beast: Asian Pythons Thrive in Florida

And, what is that guy grinning for? He's holding an exotic python by the tail! If that were me, my expression would be entirely different.

monday morning

2007-07-23T08:16:00.000-07:00

Altogether a good weekend. On Saturday Wilson spent the entire weekend mowing and then weed-eating the lawn, a chore I'm not allowed to do lest the neighbors see "his wife" mowing the lawn. Wha?

But it does look most excellent, and now I can tell the tomatoes are growing in pots instead of right out of the lawn, a vision that had confused me on days previous.

Then, we had a lovely visit from our friend-from-austin Gianna and her friend-I-did-not-know Ariana (great name! great person too), for whom we cooked the Texas Funeral Hambone with Crowder Peas. Had champagne on the porch and watched Sparrow in the baby pool. Altogether a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

Having the company of two intelligent and fun women on the back porch is a rare event and one that must be celebrated. With champagne!

On Sunday, we made our monthly trek to the vietnamese grocery store in Baton Rouge, Vien Phat's (I kid you not... right next to the restaurant "Dang's") and stocked up on noodles and tofu before heading out to mom and dad's organic farm. They made us take four melons (pictured below with broom).

Want your own melons? Port Hudson Organics, located in Zachary, Louisiana.
http://www.accidentalgardener.blogspot.com/

i love this picture of a pelican

2007-07-20T11:47:00.001-07:00

thanks, pat!

Potter weekend

2007-07-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

Well, Wilson and I are finally going to see the new Harry Potter movie tonight (not). There are HUGE drawbacks to knowing only one babysitter in Ponchatoula! After spending the entirety of lunchtime talking him into leaving the house while Sparrow licked all of the cheese sauce off my broccoli, our social butterfly made other plans! Still, the strange little bookstore in town will have our copy of the 7th book tomorrow morning, so we'll probably walk on over and get it, count the protest flyers, that sort of thing. Maybe I'll take some pictures of the riots for the blog.

POST UPDATE: How do you express gratitude to an 8-month pregnant woman for babysitting your toddler (who she cannot lift into the crib) just so that you can frip away a few hours at a movie with your husband? You can't! You can try, but you can't. Thanks, Amber!

Did anybody get one of these?

2007-07-19T08:05:00.000-07:00

Islamic Creationist and a Book Sent Round the World - New York Times

I'd love to have one for my biology class. That way, when someone brings me the latest printout of anti-evolution dogma from some christian website, I can say "Look! The Islamics agree completely!" and watch them get confused.

Someone's pumping millions of dollars into this and mailing them to evolutionary biologists all over the country. It seems like the wrong audience.

Thanks everyone for all the love

2007-07-17T09:16:00.001-07:00

As most of our friends and family know already, Wilson's mom Lynn Marks (pictured below holding wilson on his feet as a baby) passed away last week in a whitewater rafting accident, of all things. For someone with disabilities stemming from a brain injury 10 years ago, rafting was no small feat and something, in my opinion, to be admired.

She was laid to rest in a beautiful catholic ceremony that she would have loved. She will be deeply missed, in no small part because of the fact that she was the best grandmother Sparrow ever could have hoped for. I hate that Sparrow won't know what she's missing. And I particularly hate that Wilson's sister won't experience that side of Lynn for her own children. My heart breaks.

Sparrow and I spent a week there; Pete (wilson's dad) and Wilson are still in Texas. Wilson ought to be making the long drive back solo on Thursday at which point I will wrack my brain for something appropriate to cook for him. Even though noone ever feels like eating after a 10-hour car ride.

the road goes on forever and the party never ends!

2007-07-05T09:31:00.000-07:00

That's right- we finally capitulated to our collective id and got a popup! Ok, it's a 15-year-old popup that we got for $2K but after wilson and i spent 3 days bleaching it it almost looks new. Beach, here we come!!!!!

I'm quite thrilled. Wilson and Sparrow are home right now having tea and raisins sitting in the popup. Then I think they plan to nap in the popup. Then I think they may move into the popup, which just leaves more house for me. So this is good in several ways.

ready to potty train?

2007-06-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, Sparrow took her diaper off and hid it. I STILL haven't found it. When I asked her to show me where it was, her answer (no talking yet at 22 months) was to wiggle her little butt around in the air and laugh crazily and with great joy, knowing that she'd pulled one over on mommy!

I hope this doesn't continue, as I can see a secret depository getting pretty gross pretty quickly.

UPDATE: this morning, no diaper in crib. diaper shoved under mattress....sneaky!

Rain Rain Rain

2007-05-04T10:33:00.001-07:00

It looks like night out there. On the upside, Sparrow slept in for an extra hour this morning because it was so dark.

The trouble with spending portions of your work day doing job searches online while DH is still in school is that when you find the perfect job in Austin you can't apply and then have to waste time being bummed out about it. How silly is that!

On the list of things I'd like to spend money on if I had it for Sparrow:

2007-04-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

http://store.theonion.com/product_info.php?products_id=211

I mean really. She really does appreciate the Muppets on a much deeper level than you.

Having a nice time in Baton Rouge...

2007-03-01T13:34:00.000-08:00

I always have a nice time in Baton Rouge. Dropped off our program's 3 million dollar proposal letter of intent downtown and then stopped by a colleagues consulting firm to marvel at the prettiness and generally resourceful together-ness of the private sector.

My own university job is a creaking budgetary stone mill next to the flashy electric food processor of consultants. Still, the corn that comes out of those mills is so nice... I digress.

I'm sitting now at Perks Coffeehouse in Baton Rouge which I would link if they had a website, and a nice older gentleman bought my coffee when I couldn't find the right form of payment.

Which I think is swell.

I always have a nice time in Baton Rouge. Strange.

quick, hide that tomato

2007-02-17T20:07:00.001-08:00

january 07 077
Originally uploaded by thais_perkins.

a visit from mr. clean

2007-02-17T19:13:00.000-08:00

Well, Ms. Clean anyhow. My house is clean. I mean, really really worked-on-it-all-day clean INCLUDING the dreaded and neglected crusty floors.

How, might you ask, did I ever find the time? Did we lock Sparrow in a cage for the day?

Naw. My valentines present this year was (drumroll) three hours of a cleaning service!

I haven't jumped up and down squealing like that since I got my first car when I was sixteen.

I totaled that car six months later. The cleanliness of the house will last not even a fraction of that time. But for now I can breathe in the wonderful, aromatic, and noxious fumes of fake pine scent and revel in my husband's growing sense of what I and every other working mother really needs for valentines day: a little help, dammit. What a great guy.

got a flickr account

2007-02-15T09:19:00.001-08:00

january 07 067
Originally uploaded by thais_perkins.

I needed to test this out anyway for the web work I do for the Alliance for Affordable Energy (http://www.all4energy.org)...

aw, see, this could be so useful.

2007-02-15T08:59:00.000-08:00

I mean, it's not like I don't have time to read endless newspaper articles at work, and it's not like I don't have time to obsessively check home listings and read mommy blogs, so why don't I do this posting thing more? There's so much I could tell you about. I mean, I could tell you about my Clim ate Project volunteering insanity

or show you the new layout designs for the teacher education website I'm supposed to be working on right now:

or even, you know, post some baby pics:

(man, that's seriously cute... she gives the cat water in her little cup every time she takes a bath... then kisses the cat... then gets upset when the cat spurns her...)

but anyway, I don't. And why not?

Getting tired of Ponchy

2006-10-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

Ponchatoula wears on a person. I spent my weekend chasing Sparrow while Wilson played many-of-gigs which meant I was out of my mind by Sunday afternoon, trolling around town looking for something Sparrow and I could both enjoy. We spent a very long time doing that, and now she shrieks when she sees her car seat. A new development. They're not all wonderful, these cognitive benchmarks. We finally ended up at the playground behind the SLU lab school (Hammond tore up the one good playground the other day, just as the weather was getting nice.... i think it will be good when it's done, but for now we're out of luck). All the equipment was in the sun, like all the other equipment anywhere, and burned her little butt when she tried to go down the slide. But she liked it anyway. Why don't they put these things in the shade?

Sometimes-- and now is one of those times-- i think we really need to get out of here. But then I go to work and receive my lovely new laptop I ordered off my grants and order wireless for the house so I can write blog posts from BED. And then I think, well, it's not so bad. I'm not that marketable in Austin.

And we have at least a year and a half to go, so I need to learn patience.When I first moved here, pre-husband and pre-child, I spend a lot of time painting furniture and learning how to make things with my sewing machine. I remember the first night in the first whole house I ever had to myself, when a big thunderstorm came through and my mother's standard housewarming gift, a hurricane lamp, actually came in handy. I sat on the porch and watched the wind shop around me and was actually glad to be in the south. It was nice. It didn't last long!

But of course, I'd never trade for what I had before.

we be tilin'

2006-08-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

The bathroom tiling saga is nearly over. I just read my friend Shannon's blog, from Portland, and thought how nice her apartment with space for art, writing, yoga must be... one of the dues you pay for family life, as fulfilling as it is, is total domestic chaos.

At this moment we have an unfinished bathroom floor, and the washer dryer and *toilet* are all on the sunporch. It's been this way for weeks. Well, we have another toilet (infested with carpenter ants in the subfloor) but STILL. Last week I finally admitted to myself it would be some time before the tiling project was over, took a half day off work and did 70 pounds of laundry at the laundromat. Got heckled by the laundromat lady but that's another story.

So today Sparrow and I hung out while Wilson used a contraption aptly named a wetsaw--- you should see the porch right now-- to cut 30 tiles. Now we feed and bathe baby, put her to bed, eat our own dinner and commence to cement tiles in place.

We are home improvement GODS.

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-08-23T13:36:00.000-07:00

is still playing. Go see
it right this instant.

I mean it, RIGHT NOW. I'm having trouble expressing how much this movie impacted me-- and of course, because of my job I'm steeped in the subject of global warming on a day-to-day basis. I can't imagine how someone less familiar with the details might be affected. What are you waiting for?

so I don't only post when I'm venting

2006-08-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

CAT!

Sparrow's first word is cat. According to Wilson. I haven't actually seen her do
this yet. When I ask her, she calls the cat 'dada'. Just like she calls
everything else dada. Dada is her siren song, her inspiration, and rightly so.
He's mine too.

juggling online personas

2006-08-15T13:50:00.000-07:00

Right, so now there is (1) a myspace account, (2) a 'thaisandwilson' myspace account so there can be music and (3) a blogger blog and (4) a website. Oh yea, and (5) and (6), separate email accounts for work and home. How do other people juggle all this crap and still have a brain? Much less a small child?

Back at work after a week off. We were too darned broke to go anywhere so we decided to try to re-tile the bathroom floor. To be honest, this means wilson's been re-tiling the floor while i manage sparrow. Anyway, he's doing a beautiful job. I enjoyed the time too-- it's been rare in the last couple of years that wilson and i are both home at the same time. We had lots of dinners and I even went to see my family a couple of times (one notably raucous star-watching episode in which my mother said, mysteriously, that Ian would see more stars if he wasn't watching his little neck...)

I'm going to miss that this fall. Wilson taking 22 hours and gigging and working, me working full time then being home with sparrow at night mostly without him. At least the weather will be bearable.

Sicky

2006-07-07T19:46:00.000-07:00

Sick, sick, sick, we're all sick. By which I mean strep throat, the whole dang family. Poor little miserable baby. Turns out her sinus infection from just after Kerrville never did quite go away and she's been battling it for a month! Mean ol doctor Tran (who we love actually-- she calls herself that) didn't seem overly worried, just gave her a new antibiotic and told us to continue the sauna treatment, but all the little booger could do tonight was lie on top of me and doze. Which was fine with me, since it's about all I'm good for too.

Fine week to be sick all week, the very week I'm promoted to permanent Assistant Director at The Lake Pontchartrain Research Program (doing very slow, sickly happy dance-- what does this consist of? swinging one finger around and around in the air?).

What kept me from strangling the assistant manager

2006-03-17T11:11:00.001-08:00

i can tell through the window it's a pretty pretty day

2006-03-17T10:59:00.000-08:00

Lots of re-buying way-too-expensive phone angst this morning, but I didn't really lose it until they told me I couldn't use their bathroom at the Cingular place. You'd be proud, though, I did hold it together long enough not to wring the assistant manager's neck. You know the assistant manager. The one who follows all the company rules about quoting the price of the phone with the mail-in-rebate already deducted and then rings you up and feigns innocence when you get pissed at the huge total. And then doesn't let you use the bathroom!

This is like the Starbucks personnel that can't hear the words small, medium, or large. If I were making squat for long hours putting up with morons (ummm, if?) I would gleefully trade retro monikers with the customer ordering a small cup of coffee. Yet it is these same underpaid worker ants that stick to the company line, repeating 'Tall?' over and over and over like a Maoist. WHY? When the other way is much more fun.

And then I saw this, and got happy. We're moving to Portland again.

Pink Slips
Originally uploaded by Rocco Kasby.
NYC - www.williemaerockcamp.org
Portland - www.girlsrockcamp.org/

we can sit in the grocery cart!

2006-03-16T18:12:00.000-08:00

That was like, 3 days ago. Today she's boogieing in the grocery cart. This means 'dance', and has nothing to do with boogers.

One of the more amazing things about having a child is how quickly your brain reverts to a child's point of view. Boogers, indeed.

2006-03-11T07:43:00.000-08:00

Ugh. Hot and muggy today. Showed up for something called a literary rally at the college to help out my boss on a SATURDAY and it turns out it's a bunch of high school kids taking tests in different subjects all day. Then we enter grades and they place as first, second, third... but there's no money, no chocolate treats, just the weird thrill of being on top. Sounds just like something I'd have signed up for in high school actually... taking tests all day to prove myself because there's no-one I like enough to meet at the mall.

Birth Story Part 2

2006-03-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

For someone with so little alone time, it’s amazing how I can waste it when I’ve got it. For instance, tonight the baby fell asleep at 7:30 while I was watching ‘survivor’ (which, by the way, has become kind of amazing to my little naïve eyes, having just got an antennae/ bunny ears last week for exhaustion nights) and since then I’ve just been looking at shoes. Brown shoes. Boring. And I never have the nerve to actually buy anything online so I’ve double-wasted the time.

In the interest of being a little bit productive, I thought I’d try to get out the rest of the birth story.

Birth story Part 2

I have neglected until this moment to sing the praises of Wilson. I’ve heard some horror stories, like men who discuss football with the doctor while the woman is in transition, or men who don’t want to be there at all, or those that sleep while the woman is in labor (um. As if. How about a hammer for that sleepin’ head of yours?). Anyway. NOT MY MAN. He was amazing, 100% there for every breath, every groan. He even aided and abetted my sneaking of apple juice. Not that I’ve ever doubted that I married well, but this confirms it.

My favorite bit about Wilson’s presence in the delivery room to come.

They come to check me around 6 and find that I’m at 10 cm but still have a little cervical lip left. The doctor decides to ‘strip’ it manually. Now, I still think this may have been a scheduling thing on her part but I let it slide, and she does it, and the pain cuts through the epidural. I can’t imagine what it would have been like without it.

So they’ve got me all up in the bed, ready to push, and I’m loving my epidural so much that I’m composing haiku to it. I don’t remember the haiku anymore and even if I did I wouldn’t tell you, it was that bad. The contractions are beginning to come through, though, so I stop composing bad Chinese poetry and they bring in the tray of 100 Things That Look Like Scissors (I made a joke like “That’s a lot of scissors” and she looked at me like I was an idiot and informed me that they were Not all scissors and I found myself wanting to explain pettily that yes, I knew they weren’t all scissors but it seemed a bad time to quarrel with the woman about to deliver my baby). Pushing starts and goes on for about a half-hour. I look down and see that there is no possible way that head is going to get through and out come SCISSORS, HA!, and the baby is still stuck and everyone gets worried. Only for an instant. Wilson’s got a panicky edge to his voice now and I don’t remember feeling worried for myself or the baby but I do remember feeling worried for him, not wanting him to be scared, and it gives me the little extra I need and out comes the head.

The shoulders get stuck. Damn wide shoulders, she got that from me. But they wiggle her loose and out she comes and I’m throwing up and Wilson dances over to her saying it’s a GIRL it’s a GIRL and then (my favorite part) realizes I’m in distress and comes back and holds my head until I’m all right and only then goes and checks out his daughter.

Who is beautiful, I can see her out of the corner of my eyes while I’m puking. And she is strong and she is loud and she is perfect. I deliver the ‘rest’, which I’m sorry, does hurt, and they bring over my girl and she already knows how to eat. Perfect kid. Perfect, perfect girl.

Egydia Sparrow Marks, born on the second of September, Katrina Friday, 2006. 8 pounds 5 ounces (youch), 20 inches.

My family has been in the waiting room for a couple of hours. They see the baby, but I don’t see them, and then they all go home and drink tequila and are genuinely mystified as to why Wilson doesn’t want to join them. Wilson is mystified that anyone would. We stay up all night looking at the baby and then go back to my mom’s.

As a postscript, post-partum was a hell that I remember vividly laced with too much anxiety on the part of my crowded and Katrina’d family, no cheese sandwiches, a near-death experience for Sparrow, nasty post-birth body issues not in my own home, and my in-laws stuck out in the field in an RV. We were sooooooooo happy to get back to our own house in Ponchatoula a week later once it had power and they would let you drive on the interstate.

The baby was wonderful. The baby was the only thing that was wonderful as the whole world spun crazily on the wrong axis. But like I said, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter one little bit.

birth story part 1

2006-03-09T07:19:00.000-08:00

It seems I have left you hanging at the precipice.

But really, can you blame me? We all know the general story by now: Katrina and then chaos and disaster and a dissolution of all that makes us civilized. Add an infant and you see where this becomes overwhelming. Ihavent wanted to reach out into the big big world until now.

Having the baby protected us. It prevented us from helping much ... but also, having the baby meant we didnt have to focus on it. As long as we
didnt go outside.

I guess I have to play catch up. How about a birth story?

Its pre-Katrina Friday. The storm looks bad. Under threat of excommunication from the family by my father we evacuate to my parents house along with far too many people and animals. This much we know. So lets see.

The hurricane hits, what was it, Monday morning? Im sure this will throw me into labor and on some level it does, but the contractions are light and irregular. Everyones twitchy. I want to be the center of the universe but all eyes are on the telly and for a while it looks like it was just a
regular hurricane. Im pressured by my mother and aunts to go to the hospital and so we (Wilson and I) do, to be monitored for a few hours. This, remember, is an unfamiliar hospital and we are assigned a doctor, Dr. Lydia Lewis, who is youngish and black, which means in my book she is probably excellent for having punched through the sex/race ceiling, and childless which makes me trust her less. She walks in and says So what day you wanna have your baby? and Wilson and I look at her in dumb silence. We had never considered not just slipping into labor naturally. I think I had been open to the birth not going as planned, but I hadnt considered never even going into labor properly. We told her that we didnt feel comfortable inducing at a few days late, so we agreed to come back at a week (the following Monday) and induce then if we hadnt entered labor naturally.

We went back to my moms, and all hell broke loose. On the TV. We soon realized that the Zachary hospital was going to be inundated with sick people helicoptered in from the New Orleans rooftop city. I had nightmare images of laboring in the hallway of the overcrowded hospital. We decided to be induced before the first wave of refugees hit. I guess this was Wednesday night. We made an appointment for Thursday evening to go in and start the first drug, something that wasnt pitocin, but the pitocin would come later.

At this point I had been in some pre-labor light contraction state for three days, and we had no power. My father rigged one fan up to the generator and put it in my room so I could get some sleep. We did, a little. I remember not being able to focus on a Scrabble game with my brother, but just bounding up and down and up and down on a large inflatable ball. I know I was tired but this pales in comparison tonew-parent tired.

We go to the hospital Thursday evening. There is no big sendoff. My relatives are doing a quick 24-hour turnaroundone aunt is looking for a rental in Baton Rouge since her house in MidCity is a big question mark and it doesnt look like theyll be letting anyone in the city soon, another aunts boyfriend fights with my father and so they leave, eventually to take boats into the city illegally and rescue animals. My brother Ian and his girlfriend Senna just go home to Baton Rouge, but my brother Aarons apartment is in one of the harder-hit areas and so he and
his girlfriend go to yet another aunts house in New Iberia (this ends badly and they go to Florida instead and work at Disneyland for 2 months, very odd). My family works quickly. (Another observation: all couples gravitate to my own parentsin not one instance did one of our family
members go to a significant others refuge thereby proving my parents to be The Ultimate Parents?).

Right, so no sendoff. We just kind of slip out the door, all of our support people otherwise occupied. Bummer. We get to the hospital around 8, I get the drip, we watch CNN and around ten I begin to get ENORMOUS contractions two minutes apart with no warning. I stagger around for nine hours. NINE HOURS. At about seven hours Im making deals with myself, if
they check me and Im 5 centimeters Ill hold on. I started at one centimeter. They check me. Its excruciating. Im at 2 centimeters.

Did you get that? Seven hours of ripping contractions for one measly centimeter? I call my aunt celia at 5 in the morning just so she can tell me I can have an epidural and break down totally when she gets there. She tell Wilson to go get some breakfasthe says only if I make no decisions
while hes gone, he doesnt want to miss anything, no he shouldnt go, I say yes go nothing will happen and by the time he gets back I have an epidural in and am very, very happy. Hes disappointed, feels like hes failed me by not being there but honestly I care not and tell him so. To this day I am relieved to have made that decision. The major selling point for me was watching the babys heartbeat get all nice and even instead of weird and slow. Good for me, good for her, whats not to like? 12 hours later, I guess about 6pm, its time to push. Ive been sleeping a little, watching more destruction on CNN, feeling some pain but not much. Generally Im thrilled. Theyre letting the epidural wear off a little bit so I can get down to the business of pushing.

Baby awake, to be continued...

2005-08-27T20:57:00.000-07:00

made it to zachary ok. brothers coming tomorrow, aunts apparantly staying in new orleans despite mandatory evacuation of the city. nobody's happy about it, but at least we have power and are well-fed, if obsessively news-watching.

mantra: i will not go into labor in traffic

2005-08-27T10:54:00.000-07:00

option one: stay in ponchatoula in eye of category 4 hurricane katrina while power goes out and trees go down, remain without water and power for days and hope we can make it to the hospital if labor begins

option two: load car with dog and cat and hospital bags and fight the traffic that is the evacuation of new orleans, trying to get to momndads house (equipped with generator) in zachary, probably go into labor from the pressure change and deliver in strange hospital. last time we went out there in a hurricane evacuation, the hour and a half drive took seven hours.

after much discussion, are going for option two. cross yer fingers.

peace. hope. and hood fiends.

2005-08-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

from our old neighborhood... just found this

baby one day late

2005-08-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

doesn't it know it's its birthday?
(feeling proud of my apostrophe placement, there)

to catch you up from my sporadic-ness: we bought the house featured below, my family and a bazillion of our closest friends moved us in, helped us unpack, came over for a very fun thankyou party that i crapped out on early, and left us to get around to settling in and giving birth. Which isn't happening. So I'm doing little today but bumming around the house waiting for baby, getting a little bored. but this is way better than bumming around the ghetto house feeling bored because i can look out windows and see trees. or even GO outside without feeling harassed and in mortal danger. how do lifelong city-dwellers do it?

anyway, everyone is in rapt anticipation, and we're looking forward to seeing faraway family people and meeting our new family member. we're also spending too much money on eating out under the rationale that we may not be able to enjoy dinners by ourselves for a while (this will be the last time... ok, this will be the last time...). Wilson in all sincerity asked me if I noticed how little he's doing around the house in anticipation of my going into labor. No, honey, it's been like 12 whole hours since you've tried to replace plumbing. I should post pictures. In a week, this man has practically re-plumbed the whole house. Couvade syndrome, hitting hard with the nesting behavior on his end. I make cookies. He builds shelving. Someone get us out of the 50s.
There's also a hurricane in the gulf which should hit florida and give us some really nice weather this weekend. i mentioned this to my west-coaster friend brook who is planning on flying over for a visit later on this month, and she found it cause for some alarm :) but we'll be fine, season or no, even if a hurricane lands squarely on the hospital. This is because we no longer live 6 feet below sea level. We're 6 feet above. Allelulia.

Well. Maybe now that I'm not working and have my fast internet connection you'll be hearing from us more.

baby room!

2005-08-26T10:02:00.000-07:00

the house in ponchatoula

2005-07-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

http://www.latter-blum.com/rl/listings/listingfiles/810/web809888.asp?listingid=809888

working on inspections at the moment. sorry not more pictures--- batteries ran out on camera!

2005-06-30T20:32:00.000-07:00

no coffee = nobody happy

2005-06-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

6.30.05

Dad's birthday. We're celebrating on Saturday, but I still feel a little rotten about calling to regale him with my own problems to hear him say 'so wish me happy birthday'... argh. Terrible daughter am I. So, Happy Birthday Dad.

In the Being Eight Months Pregnant Makes You Crazy category, Wilson and I woke up nicely late this morning and while I was laying there thinking how nice it was to be actually really comfortable (takes a minute for those nerve endings to wake up), Wilson suggesting getting up. This is not actually an infraction of any kind obviously, but I still responded with something like "WHAT do you MEAN it's TIME to get UP?" Well? What could he mean? He probably didn't mean "Look at all the self-righteous pleasure I'm getting from forcing you out of bed so you're not late for the doctor, you lazy fat whale", but hell. And of course no coffee in the house so we ran to get coffee on the way to the OB and I locked the keys in the car. So we missed the OB and waited for an hour in the hot New Orleans sun for the popalock guy ( a note about the popalock guy, i'm thinking new orleans encourages a good labor pool for this career, it took him like 0.5 seconds and nobody EVER cares that much about their minimum-wage job).

The day kind of continued in this vein. It included terrible real-estate news-- the house here is selling quickly, but there is *nothing* on the market in Hammond suiting our needs and I may have to have this baby in the street. Hmmm. Baby didn't like that. Just kicked so hard my entire hip section moved. I wonder if this is a particularly strong baby or just normal? It's probably a football player with my aggression and will. Great. At least we'll be rich off the NFL.

list of baby supplies is working

2005-05-02T17:45:00.000-07:00

Aunt Celia threw us the greatest baby shower on saturday, replete with little snacks and baby plates and cups and lemonade! We're more than halfway to being prepared for The Bun already! To that end, I've created a master list of things the baby has and may still need, and the permanent link is over there on the right.

The baby is so lucky to have such loving family and friends already, before s/he is even here yet.

Pictures soon.

...

2005-04-20T09:06:00.000-07:00

Ananova - Drunk monkeys cause chaos

19 weeks and 4 days... nearly halfway

2005-04-02T21:14:00.000-08:00

and we've been utter morons about the blog. Sorry. we got busy. not much to relate anyway-- except i'm getting a little bigger, every day. growing out of things. feeling plump. it's like a bowling ball sitting on your lower intestine 24 hours a day. we're supposed to feel it kick soon (we?? damn, i need to take credit where credit is DUE) and i think i felt a wallop the other night but it might have been gas, of course. isn't this lovely? so glad we're sharing!

Might have more to say soon-- we're going to begin the battery of tests with 35% false positive rates on monday, so that'll be good for some laughs. To hold you over, here are some spring break pictures :)

(click here to go to the picture page)

test

2005-04-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

actually closer to 13 weeks- will be tomorrow

2005-02-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

wilson's gonna be such a weird dad.

that ultrasound actually looks like a baby! i can't believe it! we saw in riveting detail the bottom of its feet, too. then they took 8 vials of blood and i got dizzy and cried and then we went to the zoo. nice day, all in all.

12 weeks - we're having a german expressionist!

2005-02-15T18:36:00.000-08:00

perhaps yes- perhaps no. thought the resemblance was noteworthy enough to post- or maybe I'm just being a wierd expectant pops. wilson

3 out of 4 websites concur

2005-02-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

12 week babies are the size of a lime. Just once i wish instead of fruit someone would liken the fetus to, say, a lugnut.

"Your baby's hit the 2-inch mark (about the size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce. Her face is beginning to look more human. Her eyes, which started out on the sides of her head, have moved closer together on her face, and her ears are near their final positions on the sides of her head. Your baby's intestines, which have grown so rapidly that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into her abdominal cavity about now. Her kidneys are secreting urine into her bladder. Her nerve cells have been multiplying rapidly, and synapses (neurological pathways in the brain) are forming. Your baby may have acquired more reflexes by now, including sucking, and she'll even squirm if you prod your abdomen, though you still won't be able to feel her movement for several weeks."

No movement, that is, unless you're either wilson or I's coworkers who pontifically say if I can't feel it move it or I are lazy or dead or both.

Also, ears and eyes move around. Hey, cool.

What happens when you have TWO UTERUSES (uteri?)

2005-02-09T11:35:00.000-08:00

BBC NEWS | Health | Twins are born two months apart

more places to put things

2005-02-08T17:29:00.000-08:00

i just had to post pictures of the cabinets i got from the junk store and repainted... wilson hung 'em last night even after the Crazy Pregnant Girl made a star appearance. ugh. mom swears the good-mood-and-energy hormones are gonna kick in soon and i NEED her to be correct about this. anyway. cabinets.

silly belly pic

2005-02-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

only because you asked for it

pregnancy Fun Fact of the week

2005-02-07T19:02:00.000-08:00

"from now on, most of your amniotic fluid will be baby urine"
--parentsplace.com

gross.

second ultrasound -- Feb 3

2005-02-04T11:48:00.000-08:00

fencebuilding 2 (and final)

2005-02-04T11:47:00.000-08:00

here's the second page of fencebuilding pics

i been admonished

2005-02-03T09:34:00.000-08:00

by my grandmother so here's another entry

Actually, only now do I have anything to report. The dramatic changes of pregnancy are superceded at times by the epic changelessness of pregnancy ("Is my tummy sticking out more? not really... do i still want to puke? yes"). Hmm. I only have 2 nonmaternity shirts that still fit and the pregnancy shirts still look silly big, but that's important only to me.

We did, however, just go to get our 'real' ultrasound, which i found so much less clear than the OB's ultrasound I'm not ever bothering to post it... we had a moment (both of us) when she zoomed in on the ghostly baby blob and it wasn't moving... but after I urged it to move (by saying 'hey, wake up', so ok, i can't take credit) the thing JUMPED (twice!) actually USING ITS LEGS, did a somersault, and then went back to sleep. So cool. Neither of its parents are anything near that coordinated. I would have expected it to trip over its own umbilical cord given its genes.

Hmm what else... we are both sick as dogs and too busy to do it right, i.e. stay in bed. Turns out bean n' bacon soup is most of what i can eat in this condition... i'm incredibly jealous of Wilson's theraflu. I want, nay, covet the steaming urine-colored liquid much more than I have been wanting beer. that man doesn't know how lucky he is.

Happy Birthday to the babydaddy

2005-01-31T10:45:00.000-08:00

It's Wilson's Birthday!

How

2005-01-24T17:54:00.000-08:00

is it that I can cut out alcohol and fried food and meat, eat mostly fruit and crackers, and still gain 6 pounds in the first 2 months?

ok ok. the 3 donuts today don't count.

much ado about everything

2005-01-20T13:45:00.000-08:00

So- went to the OBGYN finally. Rude/short staff and a nice doctor, which is about in keeping with how it went with our new GP last month. The good doctor comfirmed that everything seems in order and that Thais is definitely pregnant (as if the test and symptoms hadn't already glaringly proving that verity). There were a few VERY pregnant women who looked like they were about to deliver in the waiting room. Which got me thinking of how New Orleans in the summer isn't the most ideal time/place to be in your third trimester. Which got me thinking about installing air conditioning units.

The General Electric monitor showed our incoming compact bundle of joy/rapture/heaven/hell to be about one and a half times the size of the average lima bean. We could even see it's heartbeat. blip. blip. Awe. Blip. Alternating of shadow and light in it's core. Who will it be? blip. Statistically the odds of that particular sperm/egg connection and conception/timing are astronomically small. Much more immediate are the changes Thais is manifesting (among them the undenyable need for a midnight snack for the baby last night). Hmmm. Biological hijacking?

Tonight is my only night off this week from waiting tables. The scholastic wrecking ball is swingin again as well. Last night some folks from the National Fencing Association came in. Also a dirty tongued Irish couple who said I should give up music/waiting tables and go into comedy. Most likely because I got smacked upside the head with 2 caesar salads and a passel of flaming deserts all at once and spent the remainder of the evening trying to catch up (while channelling abbot/costello and the three stooges). It was rough. dats all for now.

Preggie Pops - Lollipops for morning sickness relief.

2005-01-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

These things are great! Mom got me some from a maternity store and they actually work. Silly name, but the ginger oil calms you right down.

not an option

2005-01-20T08:55:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! News - Woman Gives Birth to Giant Baby

it's really real (9 weeks)

2005-01-19T12:52:00.000-08:00

first ultrasound today! saw the heart beating and everything. also, doesn't appear to be twins. going back for a better picture with a radiologist in two weeks because her machine wasn't very good and she wants to date it better... about what we thought, though.

Fence Building 101

2005-01-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

Finally got our NEW DIGITAL CAMERA (thanks pete!) to work, and wilson's all zapped from fencebuilding but
here's a page of pictures i've put up.

not complete yet... more to come!

8 weeks = 2 months!

2005-01-12T20:48:00.001-08:00

And still no OBGYN appointment, which will come next week. This preggo food thing is so odd- i ate mostly hummus for 3 days, then mostly fruit for 3 days when I couldn't even look at meat or cheese, and then today I had a salami and cheese sandwich, beef ravioli, and fried chicken!

Every time I mention the pregnancy someone wants to talk about twins. It's starting to creep us out. I thought we had no twins in our family, and then mom goes and starts talking about how my paternal grandfather was a twin and so was my maternal grandmother's cousin. Went to the dentist today. Told her about Bun, and denstist said "Twins....". I stopped her right there.

Things will work out if they must, but damn.

Oh- hurdle #1 passed - boss said I'll get maternity leave, although unsure about what happens after. Hurdle #2: Line up new job for after (December). Gotta get up the bravery to go on a blind date with Dr. Porrier at UNO. Seriously, though, who's going to hire a researcher that can't do field work for a year?

Salon.com News | The new Monkey Trial

2005-01-12T20:40:00.000-08:00

This article gives me a lot to think about -- next week classes resume, and this is the really fun one, the one that starts with evolution . This year I have decided to make no bones about it, and put Darwin first thing on the syllabus. If I can find my copy of Origin, I'll probably photocopy an excerpt for them and read through it. The man was so tame... Origin seemed to be mostly about cockfighting and domestic animal breeding. Seems to help when I tell them "you do not have to believe it, but you do have to understand it". Still, I lose a few students every time. They walk right out. I figure it's like someone taking a comparative religion class and leaving because the instructor insists on talking about god.

the haps: mayhaps and mishaps

2005-01-04T11:18:00.000-08:00

So. Good news came today when the Court of Two Sisters' (aka "ultra swank restaraunt") manager finally returned my call. I start training tomorrow. I was informed I'm to go to the reservation desk and tell them I "need to be processed." Images of a meat packing facility sprang to mind. I promptly shook them out...

----
I awoke hardly able to move this morning. My back hated me in 20 different ways. Yesterday I sledgehammed (sloppy verbiage perhaps, butcha know what i mean) the streetside curb back into the nothingness from whence it sprang and terraformed a little makeshift driveway. This felt especially good after last weeks' incurring of a glorious no-expenses paid vacation to "Royal Auto" after bottoming out on the curb a few times. Today's possible project: converting a wardrobe door to function like Mr. Ed's and inserting the TV in the top half. Also, hooking up the surround sound system Thais' folks awesomely bequeathed to us for Christmas.
----
I'm quitting smoking. As a pack a day smoker for almost 10 years this is proving difficult, but do-able. After a pack and a half on Friday, I had 2 cigarettes on Saturday, one on Sunday, one yesterday and none today so far. A modest start to kicking it I reckon. Already I can breathe easier and food tastes better. I'm signing off so Thais can return to her multi-variate statistical analysis (which if you ask me, looks like a pollock painting some thickly glassed man points to saying "hey, see? it's science!" totally beyond me).

6.5 weeks

2005-01-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

I keep speeding ahead in the week-by-week manuals. I can't wait to get to twelve weeks and get rid of the nausea and fatigue--- the fatigue is the worst, I can only stay awake for about 4 hours before having to lie back down. Nausea hasn't been much of a problem until last night and this morning--- i've barely been able to eat today, sticking with a little yoghurt and crackers and water, and i spent most of last night hugging the bowl, actually the light one that sits inside of the rice steamer we got for the wedding, there's a special visual for you.

wilson's been great, working on the shed nonstop. after a crying fit the other night that lasted most of the night, my dad promised to put the fence on 'fast-track' and will probably come stay with us for a few days to build it at the beginning of next week... my mother said she's like to come too, so maybe we can get a few things done inside the house as well. i know we have lots of time, but i think everything will feel easier once we've got the house squared away.

next challenge is telling the boss and seeing if he's really intending to cut off my funding, and medical insurance, this summer. i suppose if he was intending to do it anyway i'm not covered under the family leave act, but i sure could use the state's 12 weeks (!) of maternity leave.

dang.

2004-12-30T09:33:00.000-08:00

stretch marks already where no stretch marks hath been before... off to Dillard's.

incoming

2004-12-29T11:55:00.000-08:00

So... nine months is a while. Everyone assumes the time span from conception to epidural and delivery room freakout followed by obligatory cigars is 9 months- but that ain't counting the 1st month, during which, unknown to mother and father to be, a blastula is forming under stealth radar. sneaky little bugger... Right now the Mayo clinic book says the baby should be about a seventeenth of an inch. who will it be?

We were en route back home to Louisiana and stopped at the Wal-Greens in Beaumont (where Thais' pops spent a good chunk of his childhood) when the fourth pregnancy test begged to differ with the first three tests, which were sporadically taken during the previous week and a half. tinstaafp. there's no such thing as a false positive. The search for prenatal vitamins proved as trying as the quest for the holy grail, as the labels on the bottles seemed to no longer be printed in english. Coupled with the fact that both Thais and I felt all blood and reason had fled our craniums. Both blood and reason eventually returned, but not until we passed Lake Charles. The ride inbetween was largely filled with nervous laughter, sputtered expletive-riddled musings as to what the universe and the next 20 years have up their sleeves.

And now we're back in the skinny long house. Last night I made pinto bean and ground buffalo meat chili spicy enough to burn the flagella off an amoeba. We watched a cheesy sci-fi movie. Activities that are pretty much in keeping with our normal evening victuals and rituals. Things in the near future: retinning- fencing (without masks) - carpetting - consolidating (mostly trying to excorsise ourselves of the principle demon of packraticism - clutter) - building and hanging cabinets...

2004-12-29T11:46:00.000-08:00

6 weeks and counting

2004-12-29T11:23:00.000-08:00

so the online calculator days my due date is august 25th and i'm only supposed to gain 20 pounds-- we'll see. i think i've gained like 4 pounds already. i'm being very careful with food-- i'm very hungry and then downright nauseous, flipping back and forth every few minutes. wilson made me granola with apples and yogurt this morning. he's been spending the whole morning unpacking while i've been on the computer since i got out of bed. what a prince.

it's a beautiful day in the ghetto, but the sun doesn't seem to come in much. i expect i'll be glad for this in august, when i'm heavy and hot, but now it seems a little depressing. dad's coming in to build our fence in the next couple of weeks. at the top of our list is putting new tin on the back shed so that we can get the music room functional so that we can clear out the house and try to find room for this baby! wow. so much to do.

we need to find some kind of used digital camera or something so that we can post you some pictures.

testing

2004-12-29T11:15:00.000-08:00

123

knitting as self expression

2004-12-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

Just last night i was mildly mocking my nesting urges to hubby, as we were talking about my passion for the guitar being supplanted by, of all things, knitting. "hard to express yourself through knitting, really" i was heard to say. Not So! Also, I really like the design of this website, www.stealthissweater.com .

Ford Valdez Sinks

2004-12-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

One more teensy step for the slowing of relative sea level rise: Huge smog-belching Ford SUV taken off the market