10/28/11

Odds and Ends

• I continue to love Morris Jeff Community School. Ruby just took her first field trip to help the people at the Arc of Greater New Orleans with their Mardi Gras bead recycling program, and she truly learned a lot from just that one day. Also, she just finished her first International Baccalaureate project. That sounds really impressive and scholarly, but one of the keystones of IB education is that it is child-led. This means that Ruby got to pick what her IB project was, and so her project was called Helping Mom Make Cupcakes. I wish scholarship always tasted like Funfetti!

• Ruby has now changed her mind approximately 27 million times about her Halloween costume. She still sometimes wants to be the

Posted at 10:53 AM | Permalink | Comments: 2

10/21/11

A Hostage to Fortune

I don’t think anyone who knows me would be surprised to find out that I am an extremely superstitious person. I compulsively knock on wood. I throw salt over my left shoulder on a daily basis because I’m never quite sure of exactly what qualifies as “spilling” it, so I just err on the side of caution anytime I am near a salt shaker. I hate the number 13 and will go to great lengths to keep it out of my life. (I am as big a fan of lagniappe as the next person, but please don’t ever try to give me a baker’s dozen. It will not end well.)

I also pick up other people’s neuroses as easily as a cold virus. Stepping on sidewalk cracks never bothered me until it bothered my college roommate, and now I studiously avoid ever...

Posted at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0

10/14/11

Car: Resolved

So I did it. I bought a new car – a shiny new Mazda 3 four-door five-speed. I’m kind of in love with it, and the process was so much less stressful than I was anticipating. (I know car salespeople are known for being pushy, but Jeff Sutton at Paretti Mazda was low-key; genuinely friendly; and wrote long, grammatically correct e-mails answering each and every one of my neurotic questions.)

I had planned to limp along with the Honda until next summer – I’d survived all summer without AC and was hoping to drive the car through the cooler months. But then the battery died while I was parked in a pay lot, and it took a lot of frantic calling around to try to beg the parking lot people to not tow my car. And I went over with jumper cables, but even...

Posted at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments: 4

10/07/11

Pedaling Against Cancer

Fighting pediatric cancer was always something that I would of course agree was a good thing in the abstract. Whenever co-workers passed around donation forms for various fundraisers, I’d kick in a few bucks – but I did the same for candy bars, wrapping paper, candles or whatever else my co-workers wanted me to give them money for. And in general, I was about as emotionally invested in the cancer fundraising as I was in the chocolate, wrapping paper or candles. It was, blessedly, not relevant to me on a personal level.

And then I had a kid, and it took on a slightly more personal meaning for me: Depending on how hormonal I was, I would tear up at St. Jude’s commercials, but I still didn’t think my kid would get sick – until the day...

Posted at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments: 0