1 month

Whew! Since my last post, parenthood has been kicking our butts. Things are finally beginning to settle a bit after a few weeks of sheer madness and trying to learn Lenore's cues and what calms our fussy baby. A few things have been helping as of late; we've begun swaddling again at the end of the night, even though she busts her arms free eventually, and I'm finally getting the hang of the sling, which really seems to calm her.

The biggest news since my last post and in Lenore's short life was a visit by my mom, around Week 2. Since I'm an only child, this makes Lenore my mom's esteemed Only Grandchild. Of course, Mom is thrilled with this turn of events, but her wayward only daughter (me) lives far, far from home, thus depriving Lenore's Mumsy the joys of seeing her OG grow up.

So it is up to all you good readers to comment your little hearts out & persuade my mom & stepfather to uproot themselves from everything they know and retire to Oregon. Good luck with that; believe me, I have tried! : )

Heat: You may have heard we had a mini-heat wave the past few days, with temps around 100. We survived; turning on the basement furnace fan and closing up the house during the day helped keep the temperature inside about 20 degrees cooler than outside, and nights cooled off considerably. Today it was 68, and the rest of the week we're looking at 70s and 80s. Sweet!

Hands: I got cortisone shots in both hands a week ago but got no relief for my carpal tunnel (actually, my right hand has improved some, though it's still not back to normal). Unfortunately, that leaves surgery as the only option. I go in Wednesday for pre-op, Friday for surgery and then have a post-op appointment and a couple of physical therapy appointments in a couple of weeks. And that's just for one hand. I'll go through it all again next month for the other hand. Ugh.

Measuring up

Lenore had her first pediatrician appointment today and passed with flying colors, aside from a case of thrush. We have a prescription to clear that up. The doctor says her jaundice should clear up soon, and she has regained weight since leaving the hospital (she's up to 7.13 now, in the 50th percentile), thanks to her voracious appetite. She has grown 1/2 inch (19 1/2 inches, 50th percentile), and her little round head is a whopping 14 3/4 inches in circumference (90th percentile). Of course you know what that means -- big brain and lots of smarts! Today also marked Lenore's first outing into the real world, with a trip to a kids' consignment shop in the neighborhood and coffee and scones at our favorite coffee shop, Lovecup. Later we're heading to the farmers market.

By the way, no relief from the acupuncture; the practitioner says it could take 3 sessions. I have another scheduled for Friday. It was really relaxing, and I fell asleep for about an hour on and off. I'm not yet sold that the treatments will work, though I'm not sold that they won't either.

My best blog topic ever

By now, you've likely already gotten word that Lenore Suzette was born 3:47 p.m. July 15 at OHSU Hospital; 8 pounds, 4 ounces, 19 inches. She and I were discharged from the hospital Saturday and are trying to find our groove.

Keeping this very short, mainly because my carpal tunnel is worse (I'm typing with my four good fingers as we speak); tomorrow I am seeing an acupuncturist, so cross your fingers that it works, which I would do if I could!

Aside from the hands, recovery is going great; never would have guessed I'd be going for a stroll in the park five days after a C-section! And never would have guessed my hands would be giving me more pain than surgery!

In the meantime, we are just blissed out & over the moon, madly in love with our daughter.

Garden delights

With a few days of perfect temps and allergy-free days for me, we decided to take advantage of some of the blooms in our yard. Michael put together a gorgeous bouquet of heirloom roses, hydrangea and spirea.

We also got a pint of raspberries (for starters) off a vine on our back fence. We sprinkled the raspberries with Lavender Violet Vanilla Bean Sugar from Savory Spice in Denver and paired them with vanilla pudding from a local creamery, bought earlier in the day at the Milwaukie Farmers Market. Milwaukie is a town just south of us and has about the only nearby farmers market that meshes with my work schedule. We hit it for the first time this past Sunday, as all our other recent Sundays have been booked solid.

Speaking of Milwaukie, we stopped by Bob's Red Mill on Saturday for breakfast. Luckily Michael was paying attention to the capped gentlemen exiting a red Cadillac as we were going inside -- none other than Bob himself! He looks just like the photo on his packages. After breakfast and a spin through the impressive gift shop -- stocked with way more Bob's offerings than we ever knew existed -- we walked across the street to the Dave's Killer Bread bakery. Unfortunately, Dave was out and about, peddling his wares at a Portland farmers market, but we did manage to pick up a loaf of day-old Powerseed bread and a frozen loaf of cracked wheat.

Meanwhile, back in the garden, seems Chihuahuas are also sprouting up. Ripe for the picking!

The current me

Here's what 5 feet tall and eight months' pregnant looks like. I have gained 30-35 pounds, though it sure looks (and feels!) like a lot more.

Killer

One of the many things Michael & I love about Oregon is the easy access to food made or grown in the area. Our new favorite is Dave's Killer Bread, created by an ex-con and former drug addict who grew up in a family of bakers.

Yes, the packaging is funny and quirky, and that's probably what drew us in the first place, but this is no novelty. Dave truly does make killer bread. It's all whole grain, with a perfect texture (not hard and dry like some whole-grain bread), and there are several varieties. It's fairly expensive, but then what at the grocery isn't these days?

He has a bakery not far from us where you can buy day-old bread, though we haven't checked it out yet. Be sure to check out his very thorough Web site, which includes his back story and chronicles his baking successes. Dave also is a guitarist, as you can tell by the image on his bread wrapper, and you'll hear a sample of his playing if your volume is on when you enter his Web site.

What I do

A lot of people often ask what my job as a copy editor entails; this editorial shared by a co-worker offers a great description, and I'm sure my fellow copy editor friends who haven't seen this piece will appreciate it.

In a Changing World of News, an Elegy for Copy Editors

By LAWRENCE DOWNES
The New York Times

June 16, 2008

I went to the Newseum, a shiny new building in Washington that news companies and foundations have erected as a shrine to their industry. Since it’s my industry, too, I thought a museum, where sacred relics and texts have been placed safely in the equivalent of a big glass jar, might make me hopeful about the future.

“Where’s the section on copy editing?” I asked the guy at the entrance.

He wasn’t sure. “Try Internet, TV and Radio, on the third floor.”

“For copy editing? Newspaper copy editing?”

He checked with a colleague. “News History, on five,” she said.

Ouch. Copy editors are my favorite people in the news business, and many I know are still alive and doing what they do. As it happened, I couldn’t find anything about them on the fifth or any other floor. A call later confirmed that the museum has essentially nothing about how newspapers are made today, and thus nothing about the lowly yet exalted copy editor.

I was one for a long time, and I know that obscurity and unpopularity are part of the job. Copy editors work late hours and can get testy. They never sign their work.

As for what they do, here’s the short version: After news happens in the chaos and clutter of the real world, it travels through a reporter’s mind, a photographer’s eye, a notebook and camera lens, into computer files, then through multiple layers of editing. Copy editors handle the final transition to an ink-on-paper object. On the news-factory floor, they do the refining and packaging. They trim words, fix grammar, punctuation and style, write headlines and captions.

But they also do a lot more. Copy editors are the last set of eyes before yours. They are more powerful than proofreaders. They untangle twisted prose. They are surgeons, removing growths of error and irrelevance; they are minimalist chefs, straining fat. Their goal is to make sure that the day’s work of a newspaper staff becomes an object of lasting beauty and excellence once it hits the presses.

Yeah. Presses. It has probably already struck you how irrelevant many of these skills may seem in the endlessly shifting, eternal glow of the Web.

The copy editor’s job, to the extent possible under deadline, is to slow down, think things through, do the math and ask the irritating question. His or her main creative outlet, writing clever headlines, is problematic online, because allusive wordplay doesn’t necessarily generate Google hits. And Google makes everyone an expert, so the aging copy editor’s trivia-packed brain and synonym collection seem not to count for as much anymore.

The job hasn’t disappeared yet, but it is swiftly evolving, away from an emphasis on style and consistency, from making a physical object perfect the first time. The path to excellence is now through speed, agility and creativity in using multiple expressive outlets for information in all its shapes and sounds.

As newspapers lose money and readers, they have been shedding great swaths of expensive expertise. They have been forced to shrink or eliminate the multiply redundant levels of editing that distinguish their kind of journalism from what you find on TV, radio and much of the Web. Copy editors are being bought out or forced out; they are dying and not being replaced.

Webby doesn’t necessarily mean sloppy, of course, and online news operations will shine with all the brilliance that the journalists who create them can bring. But in that world of the perpetual present tense — post it now, fix it later, update constantly — old-time, persnickety editing may be a luxury in which only a few large news operations will indulge. It will be an artisanal product, like monastery honey and wooden yachts.

It would be nice, at least, to thank the copy editors on the way out. But after visiting the Newseum, I know what I have suspected for a few years: if newspaper copy editors vanish from the earth, no one is going to notice.

A month to go

My due date is July 19, and since the doctors said they wouldn't let me go much, if at all, beyond that, we're looking at a month or less until Brunhilda's arrival.

The picture is from the baby shower that my friend DeAnn, mother-in-law, Becky, and sister-in-law, Leah, threw a couple of weeks ago. Leah made the clever dessert topper. She also made us a ton of onesies with iron-on transfers, including one with the same Little Ginger photo and one with a pic of niece Rebecca. All my grand DIY plans for baby stuff went out the window a long time ago, so good thing Brunhilda has Aunt Leah on hand for some creativity!

Speaking of "on hand," both of mine are kept in wrist guards pretty much round-the-clock these days, thanks to pregnancy-related carpal tunnel syndrome. Supposedly it will go away within a couple of weeks after delivery. That means potentially six more weeks of tingly, stiff, sore fingers since the braces don't relieve all the symptoms.

Otherwise just dealing with the general discomfort of weight gain and trying to find a comfortable sleeping position. Today I woke up, wide awake, a little after 5 a.m. and did some reading until I could go back to sleep a few hours later. For the past few months, I have been used to waking up every few hours for bathroom breaks, but generally I can sleep in until at least 8 or 9. Guess it's good training for all the sleep deprivation to come!

Michael has almost finished getting the baby furniture together, so I'll post some photos once it's fully looking like a nursery.

And I know my blogging has been pretty spotty lately; I imagine it will get only more so, though once Brunhilda's here, I bet she will get lots of airtime!

Headed in the right direction

Things are finally starting to come together for the July arrival of Baby Brunhilda.* The biggest job so far was getting her room painted. Even though we're only renting, we couldn't bear the brick-red walls paired with brown carpet. Actually, we were willing to bear with it because we didn't want to make any improvements to our landlord's place, but Michael's mom kind of guilted us into it. A good thing, too, as it looks so much better already.

Michael's dad and stepmom, John and Janet, graciously did pretty much all the work. They own a numnber of properties and are old hat at kicking out jobs like this.

Next up is assembling the IKEA furniture, hanging stuff on the walls and hemming a pair of curtains left over from our Albuquerque place that will give the room a spot of color.

Oh, and speaking of headed in the right direction, I got the title of this post from my most recent doctor's visit, when we found out that Brunhilda is no longer breech, so she's in position and ready. That makes two of us! Only seven weeks (at the most) to go!

*Lest you think we're really giving our daughter a Viking name, Brunhilda is an homage to what my mom called me in utero. Except that I thought for 41 years (which means until recently) that she was seriously considering naming me that!

Time to say so long

Harvey Korman (above left, with Tim Conway) of the late, great "Carol Burnett Show" has died at 81. It was one of my favorite shows as a kid, and I've still been waiting for a proper DVD release of the show beyond "greatest hits" collections.

My crush was on mild-mannered straight man Lyle Waggoner, but of the guys, Korman and Conway got the laughs. I was reminded of them when we recently saw Kids in the Hall and Mark McKinney was cracking up Bruce McCulloch onstage.

Here's a classic bit. Funny skit, sure, but it's Korman's nearly uncontrollable laughter that makes it. What a great pair!

Happy birthday!

Today is niece Rebecca's first birthday! She was born last year on Mother's Day, so we celebrated her birthday Sunday. We foresee lots of combined celebrations through the years.

Happy birthday, Girly-Bug!

A way better than average weekend

The Kids in the Hall theme song is "Having an Average Weekend," by Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, but our Sunday was anything but. The day started off with Mother's Day brunch in Vancouver, paired with niece Rebecca's first birthday party (pics to come). I think this is the only year, however, that such festivities will be overshadowed on the blog by the Kids themselves. Their live performance was outstanding, and since it's me we're talking about, here are some scenes from the aftershow portion of the evening.

The top photo is of me with my favorite Kid (all 5-foot-6 of him), Bruce McCulloch. He's poking my belly with a wooden spoon in reference to the Kids' "Touch Paul Bellini contest." (Oh, and in case I haven't told you by now, I am about 30 weeks' pregnant! All signs point to a healthy girl due July 19.)

I said to Bruce, "Don't you have a birthday tomorrow?" "How did you know?" he asked. "I'm your stalker." Then the girl next to us said, "I'm your second stalker!" Bruce was very sweet and soft-spoken, asked when the baby was due and told me congrats.

Michael was a good sport, documenting my moments with all the Kids:

Here's me attempting to "crush" Mark McKinney's head and a less-candid moment. He was really funny and drew a mustache, soulpatch and ear hairs on his picture in my program.
Here's Scott Thompson, left, and Kevin McDonald, right. My moments with both of them were pretty much all business, as they both seemed in a bit of a hurry.

Turning the tables on Dave Foley. He said, "There sure are a lot of pregnant women around here"; I made an off-color joke, and as we walked away, I heard him say to the next person, "Are you pregnant?"

A fantastic night & beyond my wildest expectations! After the show, Michael and I met up at a bar with brother-in-law Kyle and his friend, both who'd gone to the show. About an hour after meeting the Kids, I saw all but Scott walk by, presumably on the way to their hotel. I waved like mad to Bruce & Mark, who obliged with a return wave. They probably figured I was some girl-drink drunk, when really I was just high on my great night!

Meet cute

During my recent trip home, I finally met two VIPs -- my cousin Sharon's son, Jack, and my friend Mal's daughter, Lucy. It was a loooooooooooooooooong time coming but definitely worth the wait.

They are both super-cute kids loaded with personality. Not that I was expecting anything else, of course, but it was great to finally see these pint-sized people in person!

Run for the Roses in the City of Roses

It's Derby Day, so I took the day off, though it's a low-key one this year. I always miss home this time of year; this year we also miss Denver, where our friends Tia & Justin a block away knew how to throw a Derby party -- and they are from Iowa!

Michael & I kicked around the idea of going to the Rialto, an off-track-betting pool hall, or Portland Meadows racetrack. Instead I made sausage gravy & biscuits for breakfast, and we've been watching the couple of hours of TV leading up to the race.

We didn't place any bets, but I would've gone with Cool Coal Man and/or Denis of Cork; Michael likes Colonel John and Adriano.

Happy Derby Day!

Cool new feature

Michael has started uploading my CD collection to MediaMaster, an online (and free, for now) music storage service accessible on any computer. So far, he's put on 276 of my CDs (3,750 songs); he has even more in his account.

Anyway, what this means is that while you read my blog, you can listen to my radio (to the right), which features a selection of my music. As far as I can tell, you can't skip ahead to a different song once you've selected a starting point, though you can choose which song you start with.

Enjoy!

Also, I am seriously behind on blogging. I have been a bit under the weather since getting back from my trip home, so blogging's been the last thing on my mind. I'll try to catch up soon!

Little earthquake

I woke up about 5:30 this morning to noise and shaking and figured it was an earthquake. I live in Oregon, you're thinking, so big fat deal. The funny thing is I was asleep at my mom's house in South Boston, Ind., when this happened.

When I got up this morning, I asked Mom, "Was there an earthquake last night?" and she thought I was crazy. Turns out it was a 5.2-magnitude centered in Illinois and felt in this area. There seemed to be little effect in this area other than people feeling it; one building in Louisville lost some bricks.

Apparently this quake was in the Wabash fault, which I've heard may or may not be part of the New Madrid fault. We found out about the New Madrid (pronounced MADrid, like the town in New Mexico) some years ago, when Mom and I were still living together and felt a tiny quake then. Supposedly the New Madrid has the potential to be a pretty serious fault line, and one year they predicted "the big one," on my birthday, but it never happened.

So I guess whatever excuses Mom may use for not moving West, fear of earthquakes can't be one of them.

Update: Mom, John and I just felt an aftershock. TV confirmed it was 4.5. Crazy!

Carb overload

I tried posting this entry soon after it happened a couple of weeks ago but was having some Blogger photo issues (excuses, excuses!) and just now got back around to it.

With Stacy & family in Seattle, we now get the chance for jaunts back and forth, so Stacy, Andy, Ada & Harriet popped down for a visit during spring break.

We grabbed dinner at Montage, always a favorite but one we hadn't visited since moving back. The macs (pesto mac, spicy mac, "old" mac, to name a few) never disappoint. Plus, when it comes to leftovers, your food leaves with you in a cleverly wrapped tin foil creation (a duck, a rose, a spaceship, a hammer -- really whatever the server's heart desires and hands can fashion). Unfortunately, once you get it home and open it for reheating, you find that inside the foil, your food has been molded into a congealed blob inside plastic wrap and you wish maybe you'd skipped the leftovers.

For dessert, and a major sugar rush, we stopped at Voodoo Doughnut, where Harriet, left in the photo at right, had an M&M and Ada had a Neapolitan. I had a Crunch Berry, and Michael tried the Portland maple cream, which was considerably smaller than the giant doughnut over his head.

By the way, these photos are from Stacy's iPhone. Pretty good quality, huh? Our camera phone takes pretty crappy pix, but we rarely ever use it for that purpose anyway.

The Kids are alright

Canadian comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall are coming to town, and we are so there! I have been waiting YEARS to see them in person.

Mom got to see them in Louisville a few years back and got photos with them and autographs for me (yes, the celeb thing runs in our genes). I hope to be as lucky.

Michael knows the drill: Show's over, we head to the alley. Unfortunately, the Schnitz, where they are playing, is a bit uncharted territory. I had a helluva time tracking down Lyle Lovett there afterward, and he's usually really easy to meet. And, no, I'm not a stalker, just a fan.

Devout Chihuahua

NAHA, Japan (AP) -- At a Zen Buddhist temple in southern Japan, even the dog prays.

Mimicking his master, priest Joei Yoshikuni, a Chihuahua named Conan joins in the daily prayers at Naha's Shuri Kannondo temple, sitting up on his hind legs and putting his front paws together before the altar.

It took him only a few days to learn the motions, and now he is the talk of the town. "Word has spread, and we are getting a lot more tourists," Yoshikuni said.

Yoshikuni said Conan generally goes through his prayer routine at the temple in the capital of Japan's southern Okinawa prefecture (state) without prompting before his morning and evening meals.

"I think he saw me doing it all the time and got the idea to do it too," Yoshikuni said.

The priest is now trying to teach him how to meditate.

Well, sort of.

"Basically, I am just trying to get him to sit still while I meditate," he explained. "It's not like we can make him cross his legs."

Oregon ducks

This pair of ducks likely waddled over from the park and duck pond a couple of blocks away. One found a puddle for splashing in the grass strip right in front of our house. They just hung out for a while, Michael gave them some bread, then they were on their merry way.