“I am deeply committed to returning sovereignty to the Iraqi people and consequently allowing our troops to return home as soon as possible. We must first ensure, however, that Iraqi security forces are able to adequately meet the needs of their country. We have trained more than 150,000 such security personnel, and Iraqi forces are now in charge of maintaining security in 12 of that country’s 18 provinces.

“Under the President’s leadership, the United States has contributed $24 billion for Iraq’s reconstruction. Food and electricity are being distributed throughout the country. USAID is providing support to the Ministry of Trade to deliver more than 480,000 tons of food each month. Nearly 2,500 schools have been renovated and over 32,000 secondary school teachers have been trained. Health care funding has increased 30-fold since Iraq was freed. More than 30 million doses of children’s vaccinations have been distributed. Over 1,200 primary health clinics and 240 Iraqi hospitals are in operation. Without the establishment of these core pieces of infrastructure, the Iraqi people will be underserved and the new government strained to provide for their needs.”

Great to hear it’s going so damned well, Dan.
>:-|

This is a Core Friends post.

I had a nightmare early this morning that I found not one but something like 5 lumps in my armpit and breast. The more I touched, the more I found. I knew that it was the real thing. I woke up sweaty and freaked out.

I wish I could say that I slept better last night having already made the decision to enroll Lucas in pre-Kindergarten instead of preschool. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Sometime around 4 am I wondered if we had just lost a major tax write-off. (I can write off daycare expenses up to a certain amount: I don’t know if I can write off private Kindergarten expenses. I suspect not. Even though it amounts to the same type of daycare that we currently enjoy.)

Oh well, it’s only money right? What else do we really want to spend it on? I really can’t think of anything as important.

But sometimes I wistfully dream about world travel. Given the private education that we are committed to, however, I think we’ll probably have to rely on my parents to provide Lucas with jaunts around the world someday. I think they will be happy to do it. Probably someday soon he’ll be winging his way to New Zealand or Spain or Norway for a month with his grandparents, while I tearfully and jealously wave and kiss him goodbye.

My God. I’m going to live my whole life and die in Fair Oaks, California. How pathetic!

We finally decided where to place Lucas for next school year. I know, it’s seems crazy to be worrying about what to do next September when it’s only March. And yet, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing since January!

We applied for the Sacramento Waldorf School Pre-Kindergarten/Kindergarten class for fall of 2006. When we applied, we did so kind of with the intention that we would go through the application process and see what the experts thought about his readiness. We interviewed with the two teachers in February. A couple of days ago we got our letter of acceptance. They are “delighted” to welcome Lucas to the Red Rose Kindergarten. Lucas will spend two consecutive years in Red Rose, with the same two teachers. The class is a mixture of 4-, 5-, and 6-year-olds. SWS prefers that students spend two years there; it’s a foundation for their whole education. I think they really want the rhythms and routines and stories ingrained into the children.

What complicated things for me was that our preschool teacher in January began dropping little hints that she didn’t think Lucas was ready. She never said that directly, but she made it clear that she wanted him to stay with her another year and go to Kindergarten the following year in 2007. Basically, she has a different viewpoint than the Kindergarten teachers do, and is fairly conservative and believes kids should go later.

When I dug more, though, it started to sound like she was simply very attached to him. That she and Lucas share a bond that they both enjoy, and that she cares about him very much.

Anyway, I have wracked my brain and heart over this decision for weeks. Today was my last day to decide. Miss Jennifer was holding our place at Hidden Treasure until the end of today. Tomorrow she is having an open house and will hopefully fill her 4 openings for next fall immediately, thus ensuring her livelihood.

Lucas has undergone a change recently (yes, another one). He has shed a bunch of his babyish mannerisms in favor of big boy stuff. He’s mimicking the older kids at school more. He’s playing in new ways. He’s daring and carefree and defiant. He’s more confident and self-assured than even a month ago. He is quite certain that he wants to go to Kindergarten next year with his big-kid friends Ella, Elvie, Ria, and Charlie.

It’s so hard to know what he will be like in 5.5 months. I’ve never been a parent to a 4-year-old before: How am I supposed to know if he’ll be ready to cope with 24 kids in a class?

But we decided to go for it. He has a long time to grow into this decision of ours. I just hope it was the right one. Hidden Treasure has truly been a wonderful place for him.

This is a filtered post.

We have been wracking our brains about where to send Lucas to school next year. We don’t have to change at all: He could stay right where he is at Hidden Treasure for another year. However, he has been accepted to the Sacramento Waldorf School Red Rose Kindergarten, and if he goes there next year, he’ll actually spend 2 years in the Kindergarten. That’s what the SWS prefers. Our preschool teacher wants him to stay with her another year, partly because she loves him, and partly because she thinks he benefits from hands-on care and attention. There are 24 children in the Kindergarten with 2 teachers and 12 children in preschool with 1 or 2 teachers. Presumably, there will be less hands-on care in the bigger class.

I’ve made charts, lists of pros and cons, looked at if from every angle at just about every hour of the day and even in the wee hours of the morning, and I still don’t know what to do. Lucas is aware that kids are going on to Kindergarten and he’s sure that he wants to go and is ready to go. But what does he know?

Driving him to and from Carmichael twice a day has become really a pain in the ass. I’m not at all thrilled about the prospect of another whole year of that, since I’m sick of it now, even though it has only been 5 months. I love Jennifer’s school and garden, but it’s really far away.

We’re concerned about changing schools again, given that we did that a bunch of times last fall. That change was kinda rough on him.

Kindergarten costs more, but I can also get more hours of care, and therefore work more hours in peace.

And, to make things extra tough, our friends the Bs are starting a preschool in their home, which is within walking distance from our home. The are offering up to full-time care. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

We have to decide today.

Ya know what I hate? I hate fucking repairmen who come to my house to do a job and then act as if I’ve totally put them out. I hate repairmen who treat me like I’m an idiot because I’m home during the day. I hate repairmen who tell me the weather is bad–I can bloody well see that. “We might have to reschedule.” OK. You tell me asshole, do you work in the rain or not? If not, reschedule. If you do work in the rain, however, don’t treat me as if it’s my fucking fault it’s raining. Don’t charge me extra for having to go get more materials to fix it when you were told in detail what the problem is. Don’t lecture me about how I’m supposed to wash this or turn off that or get the yearly inspection plan yada yada. “If you buy our yearly inspection plan for $200 it won’t cost you $400 the next time some fucking random spider spins a goddam web in your heater.” Don’t look at me like I’m a bimbo because I don’t know how to maintain the intake or powercycle the router or blame me because some other asshole just like you installed a piece-of-shit version of the part that you’re now replacing. You’re here to do a job for fuck’s sake. Do it. Don’t lecture me. Don’t patronize me. Don’t tell me to go ask my husband. Don’t scorn me when I say, “I’ll ask my husband where it is.” And don’t, don’t even think about trying to sell me something after you’ve treated me like shit and been paid handsomely in the process! Fucker.

My mom’s family is Irish Catholic. Grandma Mabel’s maiden name was Conley. I know that at one point way back, Miss East met and married Mr. West. And that West was Mabel’s married name. Mabel’s no longer with us, but I emailed my mom today to see if she would share more of the story. Mabel and I were never very close. I loved her and she loved me, but she wasn’t really a kid person, despite having had five children of her own. Even though Mabel’s offspring only had two kids each, that’s still 10 grandchildren!

I’m sick. I had bad food last night at The Old Spaghetti Factory: I ate chicken and broccoli and spent the miserable night in the bathroom. I’m feeling unsteady on my feet and although I’m hungry, I don’t trust food right now. I’m hoping I can keep my tea down. Fortunately, Ian and Lucas are fine.

Because of my weakened condition, I let Lucas dress himself. I didn’t know how much of it he could manage on his own, but he did everything all by himself!—underwear, tee-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, jeans with elastic waist, socks, and slip-on shoes. I couldn’t believe it. Seems I’ve been coddling the boy and he has mad self-dressing skills. He was so proud of himself, he just beamed and repeated “I did it all by himself! a few times. Alas, when I realized it was St. Patrick’s Day and he had not a stitch of green on himself anywhere, I decided we could just skip the holiday this year. I just couldn’t make him change clothes for any reason. Maybe VoVo will feed him a green cookie or something today while she has him. (I’m soooo glad VoVo has him today until late afternoon. I’m just not up to chasing him around.)

A couple of days ago, I witnessed, for the first time, Lucas painting a human figure! We were using watercolors and paint brushes and I was sitting beside him, watching him paint. He made a rudimentary human figure in bold, thick black strokes. It was very exciting!

To my dismay and chagrin, he then painted both an enormous gun in the arms of the person and an even bigger “canyon,” which is how he says “cannon,” shooting red fire.

Sometimes I really hate other people’s kids. (This is because it’s easier to blame other people’s kids for being a bad influence on my kid, than to come to terms with this violent streak in my own son.) He’s learned all this stuff at a friggin Waldorf school from other children!

I just keep telling myself that he really doesn’t understand any of this stuff—he has no knowledge of the finality of death, and that violence is something that is actually suffered; to him, it is just play. I guess I can be very, very thankful of that.

According to Lucas, “the stuff inside bodies” is “mesh.” This scientific knowledge has informed his understanding of death.

“You know, when horses die, it’s just the mesh, Mom.”

I think this is very interesting. Some people say that kids are closer to the spirit world than adults are—that children haven’t yet forgotten heaven.

This is a Core Friends post, meaning not everybody gets to read it.

Recently I had a bit of a health scare. Fortunately, it was just a scare and it all turned out to be nothing. At the time, though, it was really stressful and allowed all sort of morbid thoughts to bloom in my head.

I have a lump in my right armpit. It has been there for a while—I don’t know how long. It existed only at the edges of my conciousness. It wasn’t something I looked at directly until last fall, when I confronted the fact that I had better have someone check it out. I think I denied it existed for so long because it seemed to be changeable. Sometimes it felt more pronounced than other times, but I wasn’t scientific enough to track it in any objective way. The last time I had my annual exam, I told my midwife about it. She said she couldn’t really feel/evaluate it unless it was at it’s biggest stage.

In February the stars aligned, and right before I was to get my period, I noticed the lump was larger and pretty easy to feel. I called Ruth and she had me come in that day. She felt it and decided it was worth checking out further. She made a couple of calls, and before I really knew what was happening, I was in my car driving to an ultrasound appointment in Folsom. Suddenly, I was very very scared. And nervous. I was able to catch FCL on the phone, and she talked me through it. The ultrasound tech could feel the lump with her fingers, but couldn’t see it with her fancy wand-and-computer ultrasound gizmo. Nevertheless, she took a bunch of pictures of both my right and left armpits.

Then I waited for at least a week to hear finally that the radiologist couldn’t see any lump in any of the pictures. Ruth decided to take a different tack. She called to get me in for another diagnostic test called a Fine Needle Aspiration. Sounds fun, doesn’t it?

I had to wait a couple more weeks for the FNA. On February 28 I met Ian at the doc’s office and had the procedure. Dr. Musicant, a pathologist with a specialty in FNAs, was nice and patient, and extremely detailed in his explanation of what the procedure would feel like, what the risks were, and exactly what he was going to do with those needles. I appreciated his thoughtfulness, but wished he would get on with it.

Then I saw the needle. It was very fine in guage, but long and it had a giant handle so it looked really wicked. I declined the proffered local anesthetic for the first puncture. He had to dig the needle around in there, to get enough sample cells. I cracked stupid jokes out of nervousness. It hurt a lot more than I expected, so I asked for that local. The next four or five poke-and-digs didn’t hurt so bad. I’m really glad that Ian was there because I just looked at his beautiful face and into his eyes the whole time. He was scared. That made me more scared.

After a while the procedure was done and I thanked Dr. Musicant for the pain. Ian and I kissed and parted ways, he back to work and I to pick up Lucas from school. I was late.

The next afternoon, I got a voice mail from Ruth. Dr. Musicant had called her to let her know that he didn’t think there was anything to worry about. Although he didn’t get a lot of cells (despite the five separate pokes), he got enough to determine that the lump is merely “ectopic breast tissue,” which means it’s breast tissue out of its normal place. It’s changeable because breast tissue changes with my hormone cycles. That’s why I was aware of it sometimes, but not aware of it at other times. Honestly, this is what I had theorized and hoped for all along. That theory allowed me to be complacent and sort of deny the issue for … well, I don’t know how long.

I called Ian right away and he was so relieved he cried! It was stunning. I had no idea that he was so worried!

So I don’t have breast cancer! And that’s fantastic news and I am extremely grateful that I don’t have the disease. But for a while there, for the month or so while I experienced and participated in these couple of tests and had various people poking and prodding and palpating me, I wondered. I entertained thoughts of what it would be like to find that I really was sick, and had to undergo all kinds of awful treatments to get better. I though about how relatively young I am, and how young women with breast cancer seem to face a tougher battle than older women with breast cancer: I think it can be rather more invasive and aggressive in young women. I thought about Lucas and Ian, and what would happen if they were to lose me. What if I died? I was really glad to have bought that fat life insurance policy last year. I started worrying about getting disability insurance as soon as possible, so that if I really was sick, I wouldn’t lose all of my income while I was being treated. I called my insurance agent, but didn’t tell her why I was feeling urgent about getting disability insurance. I thought about how I want to have another baby, but maybe I shouldn’t if I am sick.

(All this was happening while Frank was having his surgery and we were all worried about Frank having cancer. I didn’t tell everybody for many reasons, but one of them was that I didn’t want to distract people from Frank’s plight.)

Morbid thoughts are not pleasant. Encountering my fears about death seriously for the first time was challenging. I’m not just me anymore. I’m part of this family unit and we are all dependent upon each other.

Now I feel a little silly about all the fuss I caused. I feel chagrined that I worried my husband and a few of my friends for no reason. But I’m glad I know now. And even if the answer had been “you have breast cancer,” I would still be glad to know it.