Protein Motor

Edited to add: Holy crap this type looks really small today. I'm going to make it bigger. Does it always look this tiny? Maybe my eyes are going...

__________________________________________________________

With some research help from my husband, I will now demonstrate a tiny fraction of what life is like with my son.

When I went to visit Daniel's school the other day, we all had to check out our kid's writing journal.

Now, a writing journal for a first grader is a pretty funny thing, since they don't know how to spell yet. So "reading" (and I use that term loosely), the journal feels a bit like being Champollion reading hieroglyphics.

But about midway through Daniel's journal I find a page that says in his handwriting:

Proteon motr

and has a crude drawing that looks similar to that image above. (Except that at the time I didn't know what the connection was, because who the hell knows what a "Proteon motr" is?)

Well, in the midst of my conversation with the teacher, she mentioned that journal page and how he had told her it was a "Protein motor". He explained a little bit about it to her and she asked him if this was a real thing. He said it was.

None of it rang a bell to me, but I did have the foresight to tell her that actually almost everything he talks about is REAL. And I mentioned that we have to explain to him sometimes that most people don't understand oh, string theory, or advanced engineering techniques or ...oh I don't know... physics.

When I relayed this conversation to my husband, he tells me that "Yes Viginia, there is such a thing as a "Protein motor". "

It is located within your cells.

And you know who else knows about this stuff?

The kids at Harvard who take classes in Cellular Biology.

I guess my husband showed this stuff to Daniel last spring, and it made an impression.

Here are some links, if you want to be smarter than all your friends too.

This one shows the awesome "Inner Life of a Cell" (the videos on the top row titled "Inner Life: View the Animation". Pick the version that works best for your bandwidth), with a boring narrator guy explaining what is happening.
(The part that Daniel was referring to is about half-way through, they show the words "Motor Protein" or "Protein Motor" or something, I've forgotten already)

Now if that one just sends you spiraling into a depression like it did me, because I couldn't understand a word of what he was talking about - try this one (scroll down below the picture and click on Watch the Video), which has the same animation but instead of those pesky words, there is a lovely new-agey soundtrack that makes you want to have a massage and take a nap, and doesn't make you feel bad because you are woefully ignorant about your cells' inner lives.

The third choice is this page which gives you a run-down of what happens in the video, without any animation. Just words.

I kind of wanted to burn a dvd for the teacher, so she would know that he isn't making this stuff up,  but Daniel doesn't want to and besides I don't want the teacher to know how insane we all are.

Yet.

Grade the first

The new school year is tough.

It's tough for Daniel, because, well, life is tough for Daniel. The fact that not all people are scientists is tough for Daniel, as is the fact that all those non-scientist people share the air he breathes.

Oh, and also the fact that everyone else is not a robot and that they have free-will.

Living in an episode of some science-y show from the Science Channel would be an ideal existence for him, but ONLY IF he had a copy of the script and the announcer/narrator man did not ad-lib AT ALL.

And it's tough for me because I have to start a whole new dialog about my kid and HIS issues. Some kids have a security blanket or stuffed animal that the carry around with them, mine has a Pandora's box on his shoulders.

So I met my kid's teacher.

And we talked about Daniel's anxiety. The crying. The losing his mind over seemingly little things. The never-ending-ness of it all.

It's hard going through the whole routine every year. Anxiety issues, blah blah, sensory integration, blah blah blah, really bright, blah, so sad, blah-di-blah blah.

My husband and I can see how far Daniel has come, and how much better he is. But to people who are only just meeting him, well, he can be one freaky little dude.

That being said, it appears as if he is adjusting quicker than last year. And I think he really does like school.

He gets on the bus without a problem every morning, and doesn't complain TOO MUCH about going to school, except for the obligatory:

"I don't think I can go, my (insert some body part here) hurts, and I'm too tired and and and and PLEEEAASE let me stay home."

A kid has to try, after all.

We had Daniel evaluated over the summer. The whole its-gonna-cost-how-much shebang. They did academic, IQ, neurological and some other stuff that I don't remember, but I'll write about when I finally get the report.

In a nutshell, the findings were that he's extremely bright, but his anxiety makes life really  really difficult for him. He loved the games they played and the challenging nature of the evaluation, but the psychologist pointed out that it was at a huge emotional cost to him. He freaked out during every single test.

Certainly, first grade will be easier than that? Right?

If only they were worth something on ebay

I've been in the garage a lot lately. My sister is going to have a baby soon, and so I wanted to give her all those baby books I packed away when we moved.

All I can say is that I have a lot of books. Mountains of books. If there was a movement encouraging people to build homes with recycled books... well, my housing worries would be over.

And looking at all these books, Gogol, Sartre, Foucault, bell hooks, Cornel West, Judith Butler, Terry Williams, the list goes on and on, really you would think that I would be smarter. Really.

I have boxes filled with books on philosophy, ethnography, feminist theory, race, psychology (normal AND abnormal), gender politics, adolescent development, Russian Literature, and socioeconomic theory.

What's the unifying theme here?

Obviously, I was stoned all through college and grad school.

Why else would a human being devote so much time and thought to subjects that are devoid of any meaningful way to make money? Seriously, it seems like the only skills I gained to prepare me for the workplace were in the jobs I took to support myself while in school.

But you know, after seeing all those books again for the first time in about five years, I really miss them. It  took all my will power to leave them in their boxes. Because I have a new mountain of books inside the house. All the bookshelves are full.

Yet another reason for moving into a more spacious house.

God, I love my books.

Sunday school redux

So... what I was supposed to tell you the other day, and wimped out on, neglected to elaborate on, was what specifically Daniel told the Sunday school teacher.

Who is very nice, by the way. Doing a great job. Better than I could do - for sure. Did I mention how nice he is? Even though my husband thinks it would be great if I taught my son's Sunday school class. He's mean that way.

I'm stalling, because I have to see these folks every week. Oh well, I guess it's ok, after all, I'm really just hiding in fear of my parents, not my neighbors.

So... Sunday, my son blurts out in the class, "My mom told me how you got roped into being the Sunday school teacher and when you called your wife to tell her she said What?! and you said How hard could it be? They give you a book and you read from it? And my mom is really glad she isn't the teacher and then my dad and I laughed because that was really funny."

And that, my friends was when I melted in shame into the tiny tiny chair I was sitting in in the hall. I mean it's one thing for your kid to dish dirt at school, because the teachers are overwhelmed and hear stuff like this all the time. But Sunday school? It's all church and God (with a capital G) and you know, judgment and damnation and stuff.

Oh! and guess what? I dropped my awesome laptop on the floor, and it turns out that they don't really like to be dropped. And now I have a choice of either living with a quirky, not altogether functioning computer, or no computer at all, so it can be sent away to be fixed.

But I think I like quirky better. At least quirky still keeps my lap warm.

A month of Sundays

We have started Sunday School.

It is safe to say that I have been to church more times in the past month than I had in the previous year. Surprisingly, it has been ok, both for my son and myself.

Like many other things that I have issues with, this one has also become easier when seen through the eyes of Daniel.

For now.

Except for when I heard him dishing out the dirt information I had told his father the day before to the Sunday School teacher.

Money, and how to get rid of it

Years and years and let's face it YEARS ago, my husband and I looked at our finances seriously, and came to terms with the fact that we owed more on our credit cards than we made in a year, and went to a financial adviser.

He gave us great advice.

Stop using the credit cards, and start paying them off.

I can't believe we needed to pay someone to tell us that.

I got the bill from our one remaining credit card this week. It was for $75.

And so now onto the next financial leap.

Buying a house in Montclair.

It's a buyer's market, they say.
But the last house I saw had a kitchen smaller than the average walk-in closet.  With no counters and only one small cabinet above the stove.

It's a great house if you don't eat.

But I do... eat, that is. Too much even at times. Still, I don't think that having a counter in your kitchen is too much to ask.

I'm difficult that way.

My husband bought me a book about VERY small houses in Japan... I think he's trying to prepare me.

THIS is the day I've been waiting for

My husband doesn't like it when I don't post a picture.

But when it comes down to dealing with posting a photo OR taking a shower, I think I'll lean towards the shower thankyouverymuch.

It's 9:30 on a weekday and I went to the gym for the first time since June, and although the new stationary bikes at the YMCA seem to have some sort of evil chip that guesses your weight, I have to say that the workout itself was not as bad as I had feared.

But the evil numbers that the machine threw at me! Bad Bad BAD! I actually adjusted them down - in effect telling the machine that it was mistaken. I couldn't possibly weigh that much!

* And just as a side note - why have a machine that tells you how much you weigh, when you can just change the number? "165? Oh no, I don't think so... I'm more like....113. There, much better.

So today I am giddy with a child-free day off.

Maybe later I'll take some pictures.

And post them.

Urine town

More pet drama.

Of course if I didn't want drama, I guess I wouldn't have so many pets.

This time it's all about the couch. The one from Ikea, with multiple slipcovers.

It seems that the couch no longer belongs to the humans.

It has been made clear, (multiple times), that the couch is a cat-only zone. But really, who wants to sit on something that smells like pee?

For several days we'd wake up to a wet spot on the couch, which I would treat with Nature's Miracle and then prop up the cushions to dry. (That stuff really is amazing!) Then wash the slipcover and put on a fresh one and we'd start all over again.

New day, new stain.

I'd clean and dry everything and re-slipcover the couch and then I would sit down and get a whiff, of     something. And then I'd have to put my nose to the couch to try to find the offending spot. That's not an easy task for me, since I lost my sense of smell several years ago when I got the flu, and although it did eventually come back, it isn't really the same. Which is good when walking through garbage-strewn neighborhoods, but not so great during the Great Pee-Off.

Finally, because we really don't have anywhere else to sit in the living room, I decided to actually put my brain to work to see if maybe we could start living in a house that smelled better than an animal shelter again.

Hmm.

Right. Cats that pee on the furniture might have a medical problem. Maybe I should get that checked out. Maybe cats can get Prozac...(They can my vet says)

I figured she was either sick or nuts. But after I broke out that black-light again and went over the couch with a fine-toothed comb gallon of enzyme cleaner and oxy-clean and had my husband do a thorough sniff-test, I swore I was going to solve the problem one way or another.

*On a side note, spraying Nature's Miracle in the dark with a black-light, is pretty damn cool.

It took a few days at the vet to figure it out, but it looks like she's got cystitis. Actually, it seems like she may have had it since before I adopted her. That's why she has always been a random pee-er! It isn't life-threatening in anyway, she doesn't have a blocked urethra and otherwise all the tests (and I do mean ALL the tests) came back showing that she's in great health.

So she's isolated for now, in a calm area of the house, far away from the sofa, and she's got a bunch of medicines to take for the next month or so.

If this doesn't work, I'm asking for Prozac...some for me, some for her.

And if that doesn't work.... well, I'm still working on Plan C.

Back to work

I kind of feel like I've dropped off the face of the earth these last few weeks.

Every fiber of my being was waiting for the first day of school.

That excellent first day when everyone was out of the house and I didn't have to go to work.

I planned that day over and over again in my head, with subtle variations on "go shopping, but not for food", and "come home, take pictures" along with "sit on couch while NOT watching Spongebob".

And then, the day before the first day of school, at about 3 in the afternoon, it suddenly occurred to me that my son was awfully passive. He wasn't trying to get my attention. He wasn't asking for food. He wasn't begging me to play a game. He wasn't TALKING. (Which is why I had been able actually get a few things done that day.)

You know what makes a kid stop talking? Heat. Lots of heat. An August afternoon in Savannah heat. By which I mean the blazing furnace that their body has become.

He had a fever of 104.

Huh.

A better mom would have noticed oh, about FIVE hours earlier.

So he ended up missing his first day of first grade.

And I missed my long sought after day of nothingness. Because now I'll be working until the middle of next week. And when I finally have my day off, I will definitely have to spend it at the supermarket.

Another year

Man, Summer is so long, until you get to the end and then it feels as though it went by so quickly.

Historically, Daniel and I have had a hard time coping with each other through the long unstructured Summer.

This Summer was different though. We hit a groove. We gave in to each other. We had fun.

We also did more traveling than we are accustomed to... perhaps that helped?

Today is the first day of first grade. My little boy isn't so little anymore.

I look at his face that has become more angular, and his long, long body and it's hard to remember the chubby cheeks of toddlerhood.

Maybe it's because life was difficult for him and for us when he was younger, or maybe it's because he has come so far these last few years, but I don't feel nostalgic for the times when he fit comfortably in my lap, when he was just a little squirt.

I'm happy with him right now. And really proud.