Hapkido and Misfit Children

So, even though we absolutely cannot afford it, we've enrolled our boy in Hapkido.  He did a few years of martial arts when younger, and he was really quite taken with it.  This is three nights a week, and I'm pleased with the lack of edge and attitude from the Master/Sensei.  I'm not getting the "badass" vibe you often get off martial arts places.  That's good--we're not after badass.  We're after self-confidence, improved concentration, and an ability to effectively defend himself.  That there are four or five other teens in Hapkido is good, too.

Speaking of self-defense, it would appear that all the friendships on the street are over for him.  The one household that still had much to do with him (though he was the "friend of last resort") has become suspect.  DJ, the younger of the two boys, has taken to spending all his free time with the animal-killing, lie-telling, thieving kids across the street.  You know, the ones not permitted in our house because they steal and tell big, whopper, dangerous lies?  He only comes to our door in their presence now--always late/after dark, and always asking if our boy can come outside to "hang out."  That child has NEVER asked if Sean can come out--he's always come here and asked to come IN so they can play video games or Nerf.  But suddenly he wants Sean outside in the presence of the rat kids and Armen.  No way.  Our boy feels certain it's a trap, and I agree--they've gotten bold enough that they stand down the street and chant his name, ridiculing and hassling him.  I think they're looking to get him outside and alone in the dark and possibly do him harm.

Oh, and speaking of the rat kids, the cops were on the street last night.  Four cop cars, all in front of their house.  After a few minutes, they went to the end of the circle and parked in front of DJ's house.  We're thinking maybe Armen is in trouble--after all, he's already got a record at 13 years old, he and the rat kids are bad for being out and about at 1 am, his parents and all older siblings are drug addicts (and his mother's a prostitute, to boot), and he's the only kid around here who hangs out at both the rat kids's and DJ's.  Can't be sure, but if it turned out he'd gotten up to something awful, no one here would be surprised. 

And one more "speaking of"--speaking of getting up to something awful, I think we're going to have to install a security camera outside.  We feel pretty sure that, if we put up our extensive Halloween decorations, those kids will tear them to bits.  They're just that type.  So, if we can't afford the camera (I found a good one for $160), we're going to have to wait and put up our decorations on Halloween night.  Which is sad.  But the alternative is having our stuff bashed to hell by the neighborhood rats. 

Goodness.

Danged Foreigners!

So, hubby had a bit of a "to-do" at work yesterday--or after work, actually. A coworker is moving on to another agency, and they were throwing a farewell party. The problem with farewell parties in Washington DC is that they sometimes wind you up missing your bus. Catching a later bus. Which fails to connect you in time with your homebound conveyance. So, instead of being home at 7 pm (or even catching the 7:18 from Falls Church), my husband wasn't going to be home until well after 10 pm.


Until Akim.

Akim, who is new to the area, was also stuck at the bus stop. Upon learning that he was in for another couple of hours wait, he called his wife to pick him up. He then approached my husband and offered him a ride.

Just like that. Just that easy, Akim from Western Africa gave my family two hours we wouldn't have had. Gave us dinner at an almost decent hour, gave us time to catch a documentary on Netflix, gave my husband a little more time to sleep last night. He and his family gave my husband conversation and warmth and kindness. They asked nothing in return.

Danged foreigners, bringing their kind ways to our society! Nasty immigrants, spreading their "lend a hand" ideology! We laugh, but there really is a strong anti-immigrant/anti-foreigner vibe in this country, and it's shameful. My grandparents were immigrants, and they, too, were greeted with finger-pointing and scapegoating. Damned Irish! Dirty Italians!

While Akim's English was impeccable (accented, but wonderful), many immigrants do struggle with learning English. Hey, it's a hard language to learn! Instead of pointing fingers and wearing nasty t-shirts with snotty "This is America, Speak English" slogans, why not volunteer at an ESL language center? Why not tutor an immigrant in reading and writing? I know, being a mean-spirited asshole is easier, but is it really more rewarding? If you think immigrants are a problem, step up and help them be Americans. That involves lending a hand, not patrolling a border with a shotgun.

Anyway, I've meandered a bit here. Just wanted to say THANK YOU to Akim and his family. You rocked our world!

Yeast and Arthritis--who knew?

So, I've been struggling with joint pain the last couple of months--until Sunday night, it was nothing devastating, just a little sore and stiff in the hands, along with my usual plantar fasciitis.  Until Saturday, when the elbow that hurt for seven straight months (and then stopped hurting, though the range of motion never returned) started hurting again.  Biggly.  By Sunday night, it hurt so bad I only managed to sleep for two hours, and those weren't in a row.

As it turns out, I spent more time Sunday night crying than I did sleeping.  So I made a doctor's appointment Monday morning.  My usual doc is out (which isn't a bad thing, I guess--she is the lady who missed the mass back in January), so I saw another in the office. 

Before leaving for the appointment, I popped a couple ibuoprofen.  That halved the pain in less than an hour.  Wish I'd taken that rather than the oxycodone the night before.  The oxy did nothing.

I requested a few blood tests to look for things like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.  They called back this morning--negative on all but the RA, which came back slightly elevated.  They recommended I see a rheumatologist. 

Being me, I decided to read up on the RA test, see what, exactly, it does.  Imagine my surprise when every link that came up mentioned a relationship between untreated Candida and RA.  See, I've been battling a yeast for a few months now, without a lot of success.  Figured it was a diabetes thing.  Honestly, I haven't really been applying myself--it's not a severe infection, so I tend to use the skin cream when it's irritating me, and then slack off when the symptoms subside.  I know, stupid.

So now I'm left wondering--should I see the rheumatologist, or should I go back to my primary care and be tested for the candida and get an oral med to knock it out?  Money is, of course, always an issue--if I go back to my primary care and they say there's no yeast, then I still have to cough up the 25 bucks for that office visit plus the 35 bucks for the rheumatologist.  Plus I have to have a thoracic spine x-ray next week.  And I already coughed up one copay this week.  Urgh.

On a not at all bright side, no joy on the Foreign Service gig for hubby.  He passed the exam, no trouble, but the PNQs hung him up.  Not unusual, I guess, seems most have to go through this 2-3 times.  We're looking at learning a foreign language to improve his points.  Something hyper-super-critical like Arabic, Hindi, or the like.  He's liking Russian, but that's only critical, not super-critical.  Fewer points.  Our boy is pretty seriously bummed--he wants out of this neighborhood and away from these toxic, animal-killing kids as soon as humanly possible.  I don't blame him.

Blowing the diet, gaining weight.  I need to stop.  Right now.  I see it happening, and I need to turn it around.  I can't go back to the constant back pain and misery.  Please.

Anal Glands, huh?

I've had dogs all my life.  And while I've heard of anal glands, and I've read up on how to drain them and how to identify signs that a dog is having anal gland issues, fact is, not one of my dogs has ever had an obvious anal gland problem.  No butt scraping and dragging, no . . . anything.  I've had dogs live as long as 16+ years, and never once had their anal glands drained.  I'm not sure what that means.  Perhaps I've just lucked out.

Today is Charlie's first time to be professionally groomed.  In fact, it's the first time any dog I've ever owned has been professionally groomed.  I hand strip/pluck his back, so they'll only be doing legs, butt, head, feet (including claws) and, yes, anal glands.  Have fun with that Charlie!  I'll be sure to post before and after pictures.

Of Charlie's head, not his anal glands.

They've had our poor, excitable boy for over three hours now.  I hope he's not giving them grief.  I hope they didn't cut his ear off.

Charlie will be one year old on the fourh of October.  We've been here for a year and a week.  Seems only yesterday.

And they just called--off we go to get our Charlie-dog!

Charlie, pre-grooming

Charlie, post-grooming

Honestly?  Not all that much of a difference, and a little choppy around the face.  But his claws look better, his ears look neater, and his anal glands have been handled by someone other than me.  The groomers said he was very well-behaved, polite, and stood perfectly for him, even with face and nails.  What a good boy, he got a new Kong toy for being such a sweetie!

Scared in the USA

So I'm hanging on Facebook the other day, taking part in a bit of a political discussion on a friend's wall. He's stumping for President Obama, I'm agreeing with him, and in comes a friend of his who's backing Romney. We're discussing wage inequality and the gender gap in pay, and she pipes up with, "I guess I've been lucky--I've never been paid less than a man in the same job, so I have no reason not to vote Romney/Ryan."


What? Are you serious? Are you stupid? You don't think (and you're probably wrong) that you've ever been directly affected by a grossly unfair, sexist trend and therefore you're going to vote for the guys who don't give two spits about it? Who support polices that forward it? Really?


Well, let's toss that silly Voting Rights Act, then, because I've never been black and denied the right to vote. If it doesn’t affect me, who cares, right?


This woman saw nothing "off" about her position. She absolutely failed to recognize the impact wage inequality has on ALL of us, not just the women being underpaid. She couldn't comprehend why she should care, why she should, in any way, concern herself with the problems of others.


Is she typical? Is this considered good or right? I'm serious--have we slid that far, sunk that low? I know that "I got mine, screw all y'all" has been a growing trend since the early 80s, but surely we can do better than that.


Surely we WANT to. Don't we?


It seems we, as a nation, disconnected somewhere along the line. We went from "man on the moon/Roe vs Wade/human rights champions of the world" to something smaller. Greedier. We've become a nation where the loudest are the ones calling for a richer rich, a poorer poor, and a non-existent immigrant population to blame for all ills. I know we can't all have fallen so far. We can't have all given up on that dream of peace and fairness.


So where are we? And when did we stop putting ourselves in the shoes of our fellow men and women?


We're facing an historic election. We're faced with a clear choice. And for the first time in my life, I am scared. Scared to death. For the first time in my life, I can actually foresee a world where I have less freedom, fewer opportunities, fewer rights, and a markedly limited vision for my future, and for that of my son. And my niece?


Fuhgeddaboutit.


What can I do about it? Vote. It's really all I can do. I can vote, I can encourage my friends to vote, my family, YOU. I can make sure I'm registered to vote (http://www.canivote.org/), I can make sure that my state hasn't passed some restrictive, “keep the poor and elderly away come election day” voter ID law, and I can figure out what I need to exercise my right to vote, should it turn out they have (http://www.ncsl.org/legislatures-elections/elections/voter-id.aspx).


I believe in America, but, as more and more people hop on the "if it doesn't affect me, it doesn't matter" train, I'm finding it harder and harder to believe in Americans. Help me out with that. Inform yourself, seek your news and information from several sources on all sides of the political spectrum. Speak intelligently, don't encourage or tolerate obfuscation and slander. And for goodness sake, choose your candidate based upon his or her words, actions, vision, and character rather than looks, race, wealth, or religion.

Avenue of Misfit Children

I've seen lice before. Once, when I was working up to my "beauty school drop-out" status, I saw a whole head crawling with them. Swimming, in fact. I'd seen a few other lice--or, rather, lice children, in the years since.


Lice children? You know, Lipnicki kids, those poor children with the buzz cuts who remind you of nothing so much as mean, neglected junkyard denizens. Not a FAIR assessment, I know, but it's what always leaps to mind when I see young kids with buzzed hair. I think "mean" and I think "dirty." Too many years living in a town where those stereotypes were all too often true.


You'd think, then, that when my boy's head started itching, I'd have known. Rather than saying, "We'll get you a new shampoo," I'd have LOOKED at his head. But I didn't. When all the ratty, awful kids in this neighborhood suddenly started sporting buzz cuts, you'd think I'd have caught wise. But no, again, I missed it. You would certainly hope that, when I pulled the live bug out of his hair I'd have realized what was happening, but no. No, I missed it then, too. I figured he'd picked up a bug while letting the dog outside.


In fact, it wasn't until we found the second and third bug (the third was crawling on my back after our boy had rested his head on my shoulder) that I began to catch a clue. At first, I feared bed bugs--see, we'd taken a small out-of-town trip a couple of weeks before. Closer examination of the bugs (including the first from a week or more earlier, which I had saved in a bottle of water because I'm strange that way) revealed them to be lice.


Oh, my goodness.


My first response? Revulsion, of course. I took a good look at my child's scalp and, sure enough, he had nits and adult lice. My second response? Rage. Rage because the neighborhood boys who had spent the night at our place just a couple of weeks before had shown up that night sporting brand new lice cuts. Sporting the lice cuts and saying NOTHING about having lice. Instead, they just rubbed their heads all over our sleeper sofa, our pillows, our sheets, our chairs, and our SON without giving us an ounce of warning.


Who does that? What PARENT sends their kids over to someone else's house when they know they've got lice? It's not like they didn't know--these kids had longish hair that they were obviously quite proud of, and then WHAMMO, it's buzzed to less than a quarter inch. That's a clear lice-related buzz cut. But not word one of warning to us.


So, what to do now? That is the question. What if these parents think a buzz cut is enough or they rely on some silly home remedy and they forego the permethrin shampoo? What if they just pick up MORE lice? How many lice episodes am I willing to suffer through before I say "ENOUGH" and stop allowing them to hang out with my boy? The kids in this neighborhood are scary, awful, and--well, and awful. Someone just sent me a youtube video of three of the local kids bashing about a rodent with baseball bats. These two, the lice-bringers, are the best of a really bad lot, and if we drive them off, our boy has no friends on the street. What a mess!


I don't know what to do. Just as I was at a loss when the small-animal-killing rat child across the street started stealing from us every time he was in our house, just as I was at a loss when our boy's best friend suddenly dumped him with no explanation (turns out it was a mixture of our lack of religion and our vigorous condemnation of small-animal killing--we didn't know at the time that he was part of that), I'm at a loss now. Do I just accept lice as the price we pay for these kids being our boy's friends? Do I offer them some RID shampoo and help them use it? Do we approach their parents and say, "Yo, did you know your boys have lice?" I swear, some of the parenting disasters we've had to face here have been SO beyond anything I thought I'd ever have to deal with. Avenue of Misfit Children?  Avenue of Misfit PARENTS is more like it.

FREE IPAD 3!

No, really. 

I write for a site called "Epinions."  I've been writing there since late 1999, I believe, and I've had a good time with it.  I make a little money--not a whole bunch these days, but over the 12 years I've cleared maybe eight grand.  I know, that's pocket change, but I have no deadlines, no assignments, and I write what I want when I want. 

In addition to the small bit I'm given for writing, Epinions holds contests.  Monthly drawings, the occasional pay-per-piece, etc.  A few months back (and again this past month), the grand prize has been an iPad 3.   Now, I've never really wanted an iPad because I have a nice little Galaxy Tab and I've been happy with it.  You know how you always say, "Well, I'd take it if they GAVE it to me?"  Yeah, that's how I felt about iPads.

And then they gave one to me.  I can't begin to describe how much fun it was, rushing over to Facebook to declare "I JUST WON A FREE IPAD ONLINE!"  I knew everyone would think it was a scam, and I did, in fact, get multiple messages from friends wanting to know if my account had been hacked.  I dunno, maybe that was only fun because I'm a nerd.

Anyway, so I have a new iPad, and I'm liking it.  It's Wi-Fi only, so we've set up our phones as mobile wi-fi hot spots, and voila!  It works wherever we go! 

Why am I posting this?  Well, mostly because I wrote a review of my iPad on Epinions, and I'd lke to have folks read that review.  See, that's how I get paid.  So come on, go read my review!  It's right HERE.