Nov 30 2010

The American Economy, Explained

So, you know how when you get a credit card bill, on the little slip they give you to send back there’s a place to write in your change of address? I made the mistake of relying on those little slips to update our address with our creditors when we moved. It worked in exactly zero percent of the cases. PRO TIP: Nobody looks at anything you write on those little slips. They take the check out and throw the rest away with a quickness. I’m not even convinced that there are human beings removing the checks from the envelopes. I think it may all be done by robots these days, or maybe by small children in China.

Anyway, so, there was some confusion with our bills for a few months, but we had mail forwarding and so most of the statements reached me. When I got a statement that had been sent to our old address, I called them up, which was a pain because it always involved navigating a dumb automated phone tree system, but eventually everybody had our new address.

Everybody, that is, except for the people that have my student loan debt. I never got a statement from them, and so, because I was preoccupied with things like moving and having a baby, I forgot about them. A few months later they managed to track me down by phone to inform me that I was behind on my payments. “Oh, right,” I say. “We moved, let me give you my new address. Can you send me a copy of the latest statement?” Sure, they say. We’ll send it right out. Meanwhile, would I like to make a payment by phone to bring my account current? “Okey-dokey artichokey!” I say, at which point I am transferred to an automated system that demands my account number. My account number? I have no idea what my account number is, on account of I haven’t seen a statement in six months. I actually tried calling back, to ask if I could give the payment info to a living person, but after waiting around on hold for forty-five minutes I was informed that the automated system is the only option for payments. So I threw up my hands and figured I’d just pay the bill when it came in the mail.

A few weeks go by, no statement, but I do get an e-mail from the student loan people! The e-mail tells me that apparently my contact info needs to be updated and will I please go to their website to put in my new address. So, I try this, but of course the first thing they want is my account number. Without much hope, I try replying to the e-mail and including a brief description of the problem as well as my new address.

No response to the e-mail, but meanwhile, the student loan people are starting to harass my parents, wanting to know my new address. “Should I give it to them?” my dad wants to know. “You’re not on the lam from these people or anything?” I assured him that I want them to have my new address, and expressed the hope that they might actually believe in it coming from him.

I got a few more phone calls, but they were all automated. Eventually there was a living person on the line again, and I asked her for my account number, so that I could pay online or via their automated system. No sirree! she tells me. We can’t give out account numbers over the phone! “Um, can you e-mail it to me?” Oh no. But we can fax you a form that you can fax back in order to request that information be sent to you by mail.

“Uh huh,” I say. “Well, let me give you my new address…”

She goes tappity tappity tappity, and informs me that this address is not valid. When I assure her that it’s where I get all my other mail, she only repeats that “It’s marked in our system as invalid.”

A few days later, my grandmother sent me a letter. Enclosed was a form sent to her by the student loan people. Apparently they want to know my new address.

Meanwhile, it seems that the various credit bureaus have been informed that I’ve defaulted on my student loans. Now the first clue I had about this came when I started receiving a rash of letters from banks, offering me credit. I was a bit mystified by these letters at first because they all made reference to “your financial struggles.” The message was: “You’re struggling, and we want to help! Please let us extend you credit!”

So for anybody who was confused, this is why the American economy is the way it is.

Epilogue: I finally figured out why they had our address marked as invalid. The statement was addressed to “Jo S. Cochran,” and since all my other mail comes to “Shannon Phillips”—and because we get a lot of mail addressed to previous inhabitants of the house, which we always mark Return to Sender and give back to the postman—our friendly neighborhood postal delivery dude had taken it upon himself to bounce back the student loan statements along with the other misaddressed mail. After spending a lot of time on the phone I convinced the student loan people to send another bill, still to Jo Cochran but this time marked “c/o Phillips.” (They couldn’t just update my name, you see, not over the phone: they’ll need to see a copy of our marriage license and my California ID before taking such a measure. Why? WHO KNOWS. Our banks and our credit cards were happy to update my name on my merest say-so, but these people are obviously lunatics, so.) Anyway, I finally got a bill and I finally paid it, and even though my credit score will suffer a lot from this whole debacle, it doesn’t actually matter as we’re not going to be making any big purchases on credit any time soon. THE END.


Nov 21 2010

Gold Star Husband

Today I got to sleep in (until ten o’clock, which is pretty impressive considering that the boys were up at six) and when Sam woke me up it was with French toast, strawberries, and coffee. Sam has been making weekend breakfasts his “thing,” an initiative of which I approve so much I may burst.

Then he played me a sweet, silly song:

I am so very happily married.


Oct 27 2010

Our Cloth Diapering Adventure

So we recently switched Davy over to cloth diapers. It’s going well: we’re using FuzziBunz, which are one of the new generation of cloth diapers. No pins, no folds—instead they look like this:

fuzzibunz

The one on the right is outside-up, the one of the left is inside-up, and in the middle is an insert. The inserts, as the name suggests, go inside a pocket in the diaper, like so:

insert
Here’s what it looks like when Davy is all diapered up:

fuzzibunz model

They’re a little bulkier than disposable diapers, but the fabric feels like it would be a lot nicer to have against your skin. In fact I have to admit that the main reason I like cloth diapering so far is because it turns diaper-changes into a much more pleasant visual and tactile experience. Poop is still poop, of course, but Davy only poops once or twice a day; most of his diapers are wet, and handling wet cloth isn’t really so bad. The FuzziBunz come in a whole range of colors, so it can be at least a little bit fun to decide which color I’ll put him in next, and they’re extremely soft and, well, fuzzy, so it feels nice when I snap the baby’s clean butt into a new diaper. Dirty diapers go straight into the diaper bag, which I dump into the laundry every morning. They get a rinse cycle first, then a hot wash on delicate cycle, then a lot of drying (because they’re so absorbent, they take a while to dry). I’ve been using our regular Method detergent, although I just put in an order for special Rockin’ Green detergent designed to be used with cloth diapers. I also got a stack of cloth wipes.

The FuzziBunz require a significant up-front outlay of cash (they cost about fifteen bucks apiece, and we bought a dozen, which is about what we go through in the course of a day). Because we were paying as much as is humanly possible for the Whole Foods brand of disposable diapers, I figure that it would only take a few months for the FuzziBunz to start paying for themselves; unfortunately, Davy is going to need to graduate from the “small” to the “medium” size well before that. I didn’t quite time our entry into the cloth diapering world perfectly, but it doesn’t really matter as I’ll be able to reuse the small diapers for the next kid. FuzziBunz also makes a “one size” line of adjustable diapers that you can supposedly use throughout your kid’s diapering career, but I was a bit afraid of leaks, so I went with the sized model. And we haven’t had a problem with leaks, so I’m happy!


Oct 11 2010

Nice Day

Yesterday Sam woke me up with coffee and a plate of french toast with apple topping. Every word of that sentence is nice, but the nicest part is the phrase “woke me up,” indicating as it does that I got to sleep in while he was making breakfast with the boys.

We all ate french toast in our pyjamas, and then we got dressed and went to feed celery to the animals at Tilden Little Farm:

goat

Robin was super good all day. We looked at the cows, sheep, goats, chickens, geese, ducks, and turkeys:

turkeys

But his favorite were the pigs. He kept talking about pigs for the rest of the day. In fact he’s still talking about pigs now. He just came running up to me and said “two pigs!” (there were two pigs at the farm–we counted, many times).

I did not take any pictures of the pigs.

When it was time to go Robin didn’t protest at all, which is sort of amazing. We decided to take a short hike on a broad trail around Jewel Lake. I don’t know what sort of weird dance move Robin is doing in the background of this picture, but that’s Sam carrying Davy in the Ergo:

trail

Robin was doing so well at walking by himself that we actually split off onto a more intermediate-level trail that wound up into the hills some. It was really fun because it had some places where you had to clamber over big tree roots, or duck under thick old trunks that were leaning across the trail. Robin walked the whole way although he did trip over roots a few times, and towards the end he was starting to get tired, which he would demonstrate by sitting down in the middle of the path. But it only took a bit of encouragement to get him to finish the trail.

I think there must be a word or phrase for the feeling that’s the opposite (in a way) of cognitive dissonance: the pleasant feeling you get when you find yourself engaging in activities that confirm your own sense of self. I think of us as the sort of family that goes on hikes with our dog on the weekends, despite the fact that we don’t have a dog and that our actual behavioral patterns would peg us as the sort of family that sits around and plays video games on the weekends. So it was not only very pleasant to be walking in the woods, it was ego-affirming on a deep level. It felt very much as if the dog had just bounded ahead for a moment.


Oct 6 2010

A Dialogue

Sam: You’re staring at me. Why are you staring?
Me: I’m trying to map my romantic fantasies onto reality.
Sam: Okay.
Sam: *sidelong glance*
Sam: Still?
Me: Under what circumstances would you be prepared to die for me?
Sam: Raccoons.
Me: Raccoons?
Sam: Yes.
Me: Ah hah ha ha. I think that’ll do.
Sam: Come back when you need more.


Sep 6 2010

Ruth Cochran

My grandmother “Mimi” died last night, peacefully, at the age of 91. My dad said that “it was about the best exit that it’s possible for a human being to make”: she was not in pain, and she was surrounded by her large and loving family. She touched many, many lives. My sister Masie has shared this picture of her:

I think there will be several services for her in different places: in Fayetteville where she died, and in Bloomington where she lived for many years. We are going to make a trip to Fayetteville, but my dad has suggested that we make it after the service, when it will be possible for our family to spend more time together. So I think we won’t be at the funeral, although of course my thoughts will be with all the Cochrans as they commemorate the matriarch of our family.

In a strange way I’m grieving without sadness, because there’s nothing sad about a life so well-lived and a death so gentle.


Aug 26 2010

Cops and Robbers

A couple posts back, Maike commented: “On the topic of toys (kind of!), I would be interested in a blog post on your views of swords and guns. From your manuscript, I assume you will have a different take then most people around me.”

Yeah, probably. The Bay Area consensus comes down pretty hard on the side of forbidding make-believe games that involve weaponry (but especially toy guns). The truth is, though, I don’t have a problem with it. I’m only waiting until Robin and Davy are big enough before I buy them these:

dragon costume

Aren’t they adorable? And if I’m willing to condone pretend swordplay, I can’t see a logical basis for forbidding pretend gunplay: the violence quotient is the same, and kids are a lot more likely to have access to real knives than they are to have access to real guns. Anyway, I don’t think that pretending to be pirates or G.I. Joe is going to turn a normal, healthy child into a violent rampaging killer or anything. I tend more to sympathize with the researchers who believe that there’s more likely to be something harmful about denying boys—because, let’s be honest, we’re mostly talking about little boys here—access to this kind of aggressive play. As far as I can tell, barring those tragic cases where a child mistakes a real gun for a toy, there’s no convincing research linking gun play to real-life violence: the “expert consensus” seems closer to that described here:

In a culture already filled with violent video games, TV programs and images of a real war, it can be unnerving to see an innocent child pretending to kill someone. Yet no study has yet linked pretend gunplay to future violent behavior, and most child experts agree that by forbidding gunplay entirely, parents give it far more power and will probably drive it underground.

I have no doubt you can find research to support either side, and certainly I don’t think that those kids whose moms don’t allow toy guns in the house (because again, we’re also mostly talking about the moms: it’s pretty rare to find a dad leading the charge against Cops and Robbers) are destined to have a crisis of masculinity when they grow up or anything like that. I will say, though—and this is a tangential but related issue—that I think often mothers who try to raise their children with “no gender roles” are biased by the fact that they are themselves women, and so their idea of a gender-neutral environment is actually a very feminine one. I don’t want to impose a gender role on my boys either, but neither do I want to get in the way of their own explorations and constructions of what being a man will mean for them. Sometimes that means playing war: exploring the idea of having and wielding strength, of being a protector of family and community.

This is all entirely theoretical in our household, as so far Robin is interested in trains and penguins rather than swords or guns—and Davy is mostly interested in boobies, and that only for the most practical of reasons. If one of them asked for a toy gun as a birthday present I’d try to find one that looked cool, but not so realistic that he could get into trouble with it. I might try and steer him towards science-fiction style lasers, because you can get some excellent Star Trek and Star Wars replica toys, and then if his friends had disapproving moms I could teach him to say that “It’s set on stun.”


Aug 20 2010

Status Update

Just a quick post as I know the grandparents get antsy when I don’t update for a while. It’s been a busy six weeks for us since Davy arrived—we had Robin’s birthday, and visits from all the grandparents (unfortunately I was not organized enough to take pictures, for which I am now kicking myself). Robin has been thrilled with the extra attention from his grandparents, and has honestly shown no resentment about sharing his parents with a new little brother. He is demonstrative and sweet with the baby, and eager to play with him—he tries to initiate games of peek-a-boo and Tickle Your Toes, even though Davy’s still too young to do much in response. He’s smiling a lot though, big toothless gummy grins that reduce his parents to cooing nincompoops.

I and both the boys have had check-ins with our respective doctors, and we all came away with clean bills of health. Davy is over ten pounds now, while Robin weighs thirty (and stands just over three feet tall). Robin’s still a little behind the curve on his speech development, but the doctor said he was “pleasantly surprised with the language I’m hearing today,” and told us he’d do fine in preschool. Still waiting to hear if we can get him into the one we want…

My big issue these days is exhaustion. Robin goes to bed late and Davy gets up early—and of course there’s the midnight feeding—and they never seem to nap at the same time, or if they do it’s directly after I’ve had my fourth cup of coffee for the day—so getting enough sleep is a real and ongoing challenge. I’m still struggling to get Robin the activity and exercise he needs because I’m so tired all the time. We really need to get our back yard fenced so that I can just turf him outside, and bring a book or something while I sit on the back steps with Davy. But I haven’t had any really bad days since the one I posted about. I think that Fisher-Price swing has saved my life: it’s really great for soothing Davy when he’s fussy and just needs to nap. So I’m at least getting through the days without any major stress or storm: just a perpetual haze of exhaustion and overcaffination. I’m seriously pretty sure that at this point I could sleep for 24 hours straight.


Aug 12 2010

Birthday!

train cake

I’m afraid you can’t see all the articulation on the cakes in this photo, but rest assured that Robin fully accepted it as a choo-choo. He helped me decorate for a little bit, before deciding that he’d rather help as a taste-tester and quality engineer.

He’s had a great day. I’ve been doling out the presents over the course of the day, so that he gets to appreciate each one. Many of them were books—and even better, they were train books—so we had a good time reading those together. He also got several hours of Thomas and Pingu. And all of the grandparents called, so he got to talk to all of his favorite people: though by the end of the day he was a little overloaded with phone time, so I’m afraid those who called later may have gotten short shrift.

Right now he’s at the park with his father while the noodle casserole bakes, and after dinner we’ll light the candles on the cake and investigate the remaining presents. But we won’t sing, because Robin still hates that!


Aug 6 2010

Schedule

So, I’ve been trying to establish something of a schedule to organize our weekdays around. It can’t be very strict, of course, because Davy needs what he needs when he needs it, but I think Robin and I would both benefit from having a clear and predictable order to our days: and really it should be something other than All Pingu All the Time. (Pingu is an adorable little show that my friend Wendy introduced me to: I put it on a few weeks ago in order to get a break from Thomas, and Robin immediately became obsessed.) He’s been watching really a lot of television for the past couple months, while I was struggling to deal with the last stage of pregnancy and then the new baby, and now I want to set better limits on that.

Here’s what the schedule looks like right now, leaving out “nursing the baby,” “changing the baby,” and “walking around bouncing the baby,” all of which happen of course at frequent intervals.

7:30: Robin wakes up. He climbs into bed next to me (if I’m not already up with the baby, and if he didn’t move into our bed in the middle of the night). We cuddle for a bit, until he gets too rambunctious and/or Davy gets fussy. Then we get up for real.

After Robin gets out of bed I sit him on the potty; we read a couple of books together in the bathroom, during which time Robin will do absolutely nothing related to the function of the room. Oh well. I want to at least keep him used to the idea of sitting on the potty frequently.

Then I get him and myself dressed and I fix breakfast for us both. After breakfast it’s “free play” time for Robin (I make sure his train layouts are in working order) while I pick up around the house and check my e-mail.

At about 10 o’clock I load the baby into the sling and we all head to the park. If I time it right we can catch the nursery school kids there; otherwise, there’s usually another child or two there for Robin to interact with. The walk to the park is just as interesting to him anyway. He points out all the landmarks on the way: the friendly cat, the barking dog, the house with a big “S” in front…

We get home around noon, and I make lunch. After lunch we do another round of “potty time.”

And then, ideally, it would be naptime. Unfortunately, Robin really doesn’t nap on cue: the best I’ve been able to do is get him to lie in his bed for fifteen minutes. I consider this a good-faith effort; if he’s not asleep at the end of fifteen minutes, I let him go on his way, no matter how much he’s yawning and rubbing his eyes. Sometimes he crashes out later and sometimes he doesn’t.

Anyway, after naptime quiet time, it’s arts-and-crafts time. Today I cooked up some playdough:

Recipe for playdough:

Put a cup of water in a pot and add enough food coloring to get the color you want. Turn the heat up medium-high and stir in a cup of flour, half a cup of salt, a tablespoon of vegetable oil, and a tablespoon of cream of tartar. Stir constantly as the mixture thickens: this will be kind of a trip as the texture changes drastically in a short period of time. I imagine older kids would get a real kick out of stirring it up. Anyway, when it’s formed a stiff ball, turn it out and let it cool. When it’s cool enough to handle, knead it a bit and Bob’s your uncle.

When Robin gets bored of the day’s art project he can wander off and look at his books or play with his other toys—it’s “free play” again until about 4 o’clock, which is when I finally give in to the insistent cries of “Pingu! Pingu! Pingu!” Actually I try and put him on the ClickStart first, because at least that’s interactive. But the electronics will keep him happily occupied until Sam gets home, and it gives me a chance to prep dinner (and blog!)

So, that’s the schedule: it sounds pretty good the way I’ve written it out, although I assure you that no day so far has gone exactly according to plan. And probably none ever will.