On the way to work: the one-car family

We are still a one-car family. We need another car--desperately--and we are even pre-approved for a car loan, but we cannot decide what to get. It is a whole lifestyle question: do we get a diesel car and convert it to vegetable oil (ethically appealing but logistically daunting and financially uncertain)? do we impoverish ourselves and get a newer hybrid? or do we just go with the most fuel-efficient used car we can find? but what about having enough room to take family trips? We tried a road trip to Wisconsin recently in our Toyota Corolla, and it was NOT comfortable: the 90-lb dog either sat in the passenger seat or in the backseat, where the one adult in back was sandwiched between the fur and the hard plastic of the baby seat. In either location the dog spilled over his designated area.

K, our teenager, is in favor of an SUV-type vehicle. J refuses to consider such a thing. Yours truly would ideally love a Eurovan but realizes this is not the most practical choice. I found an ancient milk delivery truck online and thought that could be the solution, except that it had no real seats and certainly no good place for an infant carseat. J would also like a truck to use for hauling lumber both for house projects and if he takes on carpentry jobs again. The milk truck might do for that, but the fuel efficiency would be questionable.

Until we resolve this dilemma, I get driven to work by J and the baby most days. Yesterday, we were on our way in to Ann Arbor, driving along Whitmore Lake Rd, when we spotted a fluffy, tan and black dog running confused in the opposite lane. Of course we had to turn around and stop traffic to rescue it. It got willingly into the front seat and sat there panting. It had Humane Society tags, so I attempted to call--but was rerouted to Verizon financial services! Yes, our service had that very morning been suspended because of a past-due bill. Unable to call anywhere, we decided to drive to the Humane Society to deliver our find.

Apparently this runaway had been returned before. The name was Coco. Coco's fur was matted, and we concluded that Coco deserved better owners, but alas, we left her (or was it a him?) there. Half an hour later, after navigating through construction and A2 art fair traffic, I got to work. Along the way, in between nursing the baby in the backseat, I called and paid our Verizon bill.

Now, we would not have had this whole adventure together if we were a two-car family, and we might never have picked up Coco. I guess we are waiting for a sign to make the transition to two vehicles, and until then, we travel as a pack.

Eating in, eating out, fever up, fever down

I am now contemplating pesto recipes--with basil, with arugula, with almonds. This is not how I have typically spent my evenings, but cooking has taken on a new priority in my life. I speculate the following reasons: first, with the baby, I am at home more in the evenings; second, I now have a garden which makes cooking more exciting since I can use my own homegrown ingredients; and third, maybe I am just getting older.

Yesterday I ate out for both lunch and dinner, work-related events where I could not fully appreciate or pay attention to the food because I was having conversations with potential employers. Both were in funky locations: lunch at the (apparently) famous tuba museum in Okemos, and then dinner at Traffic Jam and Snug in Detroit. I chose the latter and was proud of myself for finding it online, after trying various Google approaches to "Detroit restaurants," hoping to weed out the overpriced Italian and touristy pizza joints. Any place that makes both its own beer and its own ice cream is worth trying. I tried the oatmeal stout under the watchful eyes of a giant deer head.

I came home feeling somewhat ill. The food was good, but I think I have gotten out of the habit of eating restaurant food--or maybe I was just exhausted from almost four hours of driving and multiple interviews in one day, including worrying about Baby O, who developed a fever in the middle of all of this.

The fever continued for 36 hours or so. We think it was just from teething, but since she had never had one before, in all her 10 months, it was cause for drama. We gave her dropper-fulls of vile cherry-flavored acetaminophen, which contains frightening ingredients like sucralose, things I would have hoped to avoid having my child consume for at least another year or two.

Finally, just an hour ago, she woke up for her late evening nursing, and clearly she felt better. Lo and behold: her fever had broken! Now we hope her normal temperature holds. I stayed home from work today, with the rationale that she needed to nurse while she was feeling poorly, but I need to go in tomorrow.

I wish that such a speedy recovery could visit the other members of my family whose health is under attack: my father and my aunt. I learned that yesterday afternoon, while I was reading the ingredients of cherry-flavored acetaminophen, my father was visiting the emergency room. I believe his symptoms are side effects from the latest of his many medications, but the investigation continues. He is back home, with a possible surgical procedure to be planned and other vague solutions.

My aunt in Texas was admitted to the hospital this weekend with pneumonia, a very serious condition for someone with her combination of health issues. She has never met Baby O. I still hope she gets to.

Green beans and baby independence

Today Baby O ate green beans for the first time. It is a thrill watching her pick up little pieces in her hand, raise her hand to her mouth, and then try to figure out how to unfurl her fingers at the right moment and right angle for the green bean to be consumed. Sometimes she does it while watching me, as I watch her.

She also enjoyed some goat cheese and challah bread today, not to mention egg frittata, grapes, and raspberries. She has gone quickly from an all sweet potatoes and rice cereal diet to daily menus of stunning variety.

Another first for her today was being left with someone other than her parents, for a whole hour and a half. According to the report we received: she went for a walk in her stroller, saw bunnies in the grass, and then took a nap in her stroller; she woke up, played peek-a-boo, climbed stairs, and took books off shelves, and thus was entertained enough not to cry once for her parents. This must be a good sign--we are raising an independent baby--but of course, it makes me wonder, didn't she miss us at all?!

Meanwhile, her parents experienced the novelty of both riding in the front seats of the car at the same time. We went to Friends Meeting, where I kept my blackberry on vibrate next to my leg, and checked regularly in case I had received a text message that somehow failed to vibrate--not the best circumstances for appreciating meditative silence.

I grew up in the Ann Arbor Meeting, and I do find the silence relaxing even while being on baby message alert. The sweep of the wooden beams and the leafy garden area outside the glass doors give me reassurance of continuity, to be found even in the most winding of paths.

Jake's acupuncture day

Jake is our dog. (Well, he was J's and J's daughter K's dog, but then as households merged he became my dog, too.) Since our move back to Michigan, he has had some anal gland issues--I will not go into details, but suffice it to say that this has been stinky and unpleasant, for him and for us. We thought he would be relieved to say goodbye to the hot pavement of Brooklyn and return to his old house and big backyard, but perhaps he missed the off-leash time in Prospect Park more than we knew. Or perhaps it was too much change in routine, since, as our new vet hypothesizes, he has a lot of wood (the element) in his personality, and those of the woody element like routine and to be in control of their environment.

Yes, this afternoon we were analyzing the elements of Jake's personality, at our acupuncture consult with our new vet--whom I would like to have as a new best friend, but so far the relationship is strictly professional. After a discussion of his history--which also felt like a discussion of our relationship history and therefore a bit like couple counseling--Jake received many small needles along his back and in his legs. We had to try to keep him relatively still for 25 minutes. The needles were intended to unblock stagnant energy on the liver meridian (or something close to that description). He did not seem to mind too much, but he was very enthusiastic when we finally put his leash on him to leave.

I am now contemplating the idea of taking Tiger Lilly, the cat, in for acupuncture, because I want to know what her dominant element is and what she would do with the needles. I am not sure what to say the complaint is, unless there might be some treatment for the psychological condition that causes her to drag stuffed animals and dirty socks around the house yowling whenever anyone is trying to sleep. In the past, we have discussed taking her to a pet psychic to see if we could uncover the hidden need or trauma that she is expressing, but in the end I think we were scared to find out.

Russians with hats

Last night I had a rare opportunity to be in the YMCA sauna at 9:30 pm, after a nice swim. Three ladies chatting in Russian shared the sauna with me. Two of them were wearing matching white hats, with brims. Why wear a hat in a sauna? Any Russians out there want to clarify if this is a common practice?

Bastille Day beer and mowing

Since it is Bastille Day today, I imagine having a dinner of some sort of roasted wild bird with a buttery sauce, paired with an elegant red wine. I would wear an Hermes scarf and might smoke after dinner. But instead, we are vegetarian and live in Whitmore Lake, so we are having rice pilaf and sauteed kale, with Oberon beer (brewed in Comstock, MI).
A Google search on "bastille day whitmore lake" turns up mention of a 2009 Bastille Day race in Fenton, Michigan, but not much else. Apparently the residents of southeastern Michigan are not lining up to play boules.
My partner Jeffree is mowing the yard. This makes me wonder why mowing the grass seems like such an American activity. I imagine the French who do not live in Parisian apartments to have meadows of wild grasses and flowers instead of lawns. While romantic, this notion does contain a grain of truth if the number of titles listed on Amazon.com under "American lawn" are any sort of evidence (exhibit A: "The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession," by Virginia Scott Jenkins).

Ah, the travesty of the manicured lawn... but just to be clear: our lawn is far from manicured. It has many weeds in it, since it is never chemically treated, and the flower beds are taken over by poison ivy--another problem the French do not have. Per Wikipedia: "Many Europeans who hike in the US and Canada are surprised to find that such a hazardous plant exists so commonly on the continent." Indeed! I am also surprised--constantly.

This brings me to the other Michigan hazard: the mosquito. The Wikipedia article on the mosquito does not tell me how prevalent it is in France, but I did uncover an interesting article from last summer about the French spraying farmland to kill mosquitoes who were at risk of crossing the channel into England: "French officials launched the commando operation after insect experts warned that as many as six billion mosquito larvae had started hatching in swampland near the France-Belgium border--– less than 100 miles from the south coast of England." I wondered for a moment why the French would care if their mosquitoes ended up in England, and then I realized (ah, the tangled web of the Web) that the article I was reading was from the Telegraph, so clearly they were worried about the potential migration, even if the French had other motivations.

Nevertheless, here's to the French, poison-ivy free and drenched in buttery silk! Vive la revolution! (don't know yet how to insert accents in this blog, so I apologize for the lack thereof)

Butterflies on display

First blog post. This seems momentous. I imagine a blog as tapping into a stream of consciousness and capturing fragments of it, pinning them onto the electronic page like butterfly specimens: water taking wing until fixed.

Since no one is reading this yet, how does it differ from a journal entry? Perhaps in that it is a message sent into the virtual world, while my journal keeps its covers closed beside my bed.