Boob job

I had a mammogram today. I felt kind of silly going, since I'm only 36 and don't have a history if breast cancer in my family. But last year my doctor said I should have one just to establish a baseline, and more importantly, I promised my friend Tracey, who does have a family history of breast cancer, that I'd get it done. To be honest, I'd probably never get one ever if there weren't people in my life prodding me to do it, because it's just not high on my list of concerns, and I couldn't be bothered. But that's just the kind of attitude that would get me breast cancer, isn't it? So I might as well take half an hour out of my day and consider it a sacrifice to the cancer gods. I figure it's like envisioning the plane crashing before take-off to ensure that nothing goes wrong in the air.

Does anyone else think this way?

Anyway, I had a mammorgram today, and it was no big deal. I'm not sure where this rumor got started that it's painful, because it's not. Awkward? Sure. Uncomfortable? Absolutely. But definitely not painful. Actually, it was kind of amusing, the way the technician arranged my breast on the tray like a cook preparing a nice filet. She was taking the pictures with a digital camera, so I got to take a peek at the images on the computer before I left, and I was struck by how lovely they were. My boobs on the tray they were just pieces of pale meat squeezed between plexiglass plates, but on the screen, their white outlines against the black background looked like water balloons filled with gauzy cobwebs, bouyant and beautiful.

Semantics

For those of you who worried about the day when TheBoy realized that growing up with two mommies is not the norm, (I, for one, have been rehearsing answers to various versions of the "why don't I have a daddy?" question since before TheBoy was born,) I have good news: you can all relax; TheBoy has worked it out for himself.

The other day he was telling me how one of his little buddies has two mommies. "Oh?" I said, knowing this not to be the case. "Who are his mommies?"

"Karen is his mommy," TB told me.

"Then who is his other mommy?" I asked.

"Stuart."

Of course, I thought. That makes perfect sense. A mommy is someone who lives with you and takes care of you, loves you, plays with you, eats with you and sometimes drives you to school. To test my hypothosis, I asked him how many mommies his other friends have.

"Two," he answered, and rattled off all the mommies' names, including Todd, Rich and Charlie. Then he said, "Ben has one mommy. Why Ben only have one mommy?" So I explained to him about single moms - an answer I hadn't been rehearsing for three years, but I think I did o.k. (Months of the "why?" phase has taught me to think fast when it comes to responding to complex life questions in language that a 2-year-old can understand.)

It's not that he doesn't know the difference between boys and girls. There was a time when he seemed surprised to learn that his many uncles and grandads have anatomy simliar to his own, but we disabused him of the notion he seemed to gather from casual observation: that all the big people, like his mommies, have "'ginas" and all the little ones, like his buddies, have penises. So I don't think he believes that all the mommies, including the ones named Bob, are girls; he just doesn't make a gender distinction between parents. Smart Boy!

I'm constantly amazed watching The Boy sort out how the world works. And I love that, in this case at least, he's worked it out so the world conforms to his norm, and not the other way around.

Move over

There's a war going on in my bed, and I'm losing.

Judybat is a tiny, tiny woman. Not quite midget-sized, but fairly close. I am a giantess. Yet every morning, I wake up to find myself on the verge of falling out of bed and curled into a tight little ball. Judybat, in contrast, is splayed out across a good three-quarters of the mattress.

When I complain, she laughs. At me. When I try to shove my way over, she whines. Loudly. Lately, TheBoy has taken to crawling into bed with us. And guess what? He's a bed hog, too.

I'm not asking for much, just my fair half of the bed. I suspect I would sleep better, and be a lot less cranky, if she was only willing to cede some space. But the woman has claimed her ground, and she's not going to give it up without a fight.

Happy president's day

In honor of the holiday, a list . . .

AnnaRay's five favorite presidents
5) James K. Polk. There's a good reason They Might Be Giants wrote a song about him.
4) Lyndon Johnson. Without Vietnam, he was a giant for civil rights -- despite being a backwoods, election-stealing, racist, sexist, pooping-in-front-of-other-people jerk. With Vietnam, he was a Shakespearean tragedy.
3) FDR. He got us out of the Depression, got us into our last just war and, to top it all, was perhaps the greatest pure politician ever in the White House.
2) Teddy Roosevelt. A pampered and sickly rich kid who grew up to be one tough dude. If only somebody in the Republican Party would read any of the umpteen bios of him published in the last five years and realize that you can be an environmentalist and an intellectual and still scare the rest of the world into behaving the way you want.
1) Abraham Lincoln. A god among men. Seriously. It's scary and depressing as hell to think about how much better off -- and better led -- the great Southern swath of this country would be if he'd lived a little longer.

Anyway, that's my list. Feel free to share your own.

And now a word from our sponsors

I received in the email the other day a plea from the Human Rights Campaign to renew my membership. (I'd joined because someone came knocking on my door asking for money, and I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, which is unfortunate for me, because it seems there are a lot of people in Portland willing to go door-to-door, and apparently our progressive upscale neighborhood is mecca for them. This year I also gave money to OSPIRG and some kids-first Oregon schools charity I can't even remember the name of, but only because they asked.)

Anyway, along with my membership renewal, (which I will not fill out, because it came in the mail and not with an earnest and tattoed 20-year-old standing on my front porch,) there was a packet of advertisments from HRC's national sponsors, and while I was impressed with some of the big, not-so-obvious names - Washington Mutual, IBM, Canada (ok, maybe that last one was obvious) - I got a little weirded out by the ads themselves. It was like they were written in some not-so-secret club code.

In the Chase flyer advertising discounted closing costs for HRC members, for example, there's a picture of two short-haired women, one leaning on the other's shoulder, and underneath it says "we know how to make you feel at home." What do you think they mean by that? More to the point, why is that one woman smirking? Does she know something?

My favorite is the IBM ad sporting the text "Imagine what could happen if companies' doors were open to everyone?" The picture shows a door frame, plopped down in front of an office building, and in the open doorway stand a black guy in a suit, an Asian woman, also in a suit, a Latino-looking dude in an oxford shirt with the collar open and the sleeves rolled up, and a white woman with very hip-looking very open-collared shirt tucked into belted slacks, looking like she just walked off the set of The L Word.

Interestingly enough, the black guy and the dyke are actually standing outside the doorway. What do you think they mean by that? Also, everyone looks pretty pissed off - except for the lesbian. She's got a smile on her face that makes me think she definitely knows something.

What could it be?

Are they over yet?

One of the most important days of the year passed by this week with nothing but a brief deep inside my morning paper.

The reason: The freaking Winter Olympics.

Perhaps I lack a certain innate patriotism, but I just don't care. Michelle Kwan dropping out because of groin problems? Don't care. Bode Miller says something stupid? Don't care. Lindsay Jacobellis loses the gold because she's hotdogging? OK, maybe I care about that long enough to read the Times story and launch into my best mommy voice, 'This is a very painful moment for her, but I'm sure she's learned a valuable lesson, and that's really what athletic competition is all about.' People from strange countries doing strange things with strange equipment in a place that is much too cold for any sane person?

Really don't care. I am a sports fanatic, as poor Judybat will attest from the hours I spent last summer forcing her to listen to Yankee game broadcasts piped in over the Internet. (The Internet: It's not just for porn.)

So these are dark, dark days. My Tar Heels are doing suprisingly well given that they lost pretty much everyone who played in the national championship last season, but I rarely get to see them play. (You might recall that we don't have cable. Perhaps there's a reason for that.) None of the interesting golf tournaments -- Judybat will note that there are no interesting golf tournaments, but she's wrong -- start until the pros can play someplace other than California and southern Florida. The biggest sporting event of the weekend is, ugh, NASCAR. (I'm sure those nice boys work very hard, but putting on slippers and driving in a circle for four hours isn't a sport. It's just silly.)

There was one ray of hope this week, one glimmer of sunshine that suggested that spring -- and a return to the days when I actually read the sports section -- is coming. Pitchers and catchers reported Thursday, one of the best days of the year because everyone has a chance and all the old familiar faces are back on TV screen and it means real games are around the corner -- as are March Madness and the Masters and assorted other springtime yummies to take the mind off the real world.

But there was just a paragraph in the paper. Stupid Olympics.

Life in the fast lane

1. The Boy likes to be sung a lullabye before going to bed. The song he requests every night: Yankee Doodle.

2. The Boy was standing in front of the toilet trying to pee and said to me, "It's not coming. It's getting something to eat."

3. The Boy and I were watching the otters at the zoo today, and I said, "Look! See how it eats floating on it's back!" Then I realized the pink thing the otter had in its paws and was stuffing into its mouth was not food; he was giving himself a blow job.

Guest speaker

Listen, people - I am a dog, and I know a few things. Like, five. I know at least five things, and one of them is that when the little human is sitting at the table in the room where all the best smells come from, food is going to fall on the floor. That's why we position ourselves right there at your feet, you see? Because whatever falls on the floor is OURS, man.

So I think it's very poor form for you people to be dropping stuff off that table that's not food, because then you get a situation like this:




Tables are for eating, people! Can we all agree on that? I mean, it's bad enough that the small one wants to play jump rope with my tail and I'm not even allowed to bite him, but now I have to go around looking like Gorbachev?




Seriously. It's humiliating. And yes, world leaders are one of the five things I know. The others are sit, stay and the capitol of Georgia. Now if I could only figure out what that smell is under the porch.

Eyes front

Dear Miss Manners:

I was riding the bus this morning, reading the Times and minding my own business, when a woman sat down next to me on the right and proceeded to read over my shoulder. Or rather, proceeded to read MY newspaper. The one I was holding. And reading. Myself.

Please understand: I'm not one of those crazy people who refuses to let anyone read over their shoulder. I'm not, say, Judybat. But having some stranger mooching my paper and my air space was, I hate to say, more than slightly annoying. Not wanting to be rude, I shifted slightly to the left. She shifted slightly to the left for a better view. I began turning the pages quite rapidly, in the hope that she would get dizzy and buzz the heck off. But how could I skip the story about our fine, upstanding vice president and the poor, also upstanding rich white guy he shot in the face?

Rather than make a scene by urging my companion to keep her freaking eyes off my danged newspaper before I punched her in the nose, I grit my teeth until she got off the bus. But I'm hoping you can help me be prepared for future encounters: What's the appropriate -- and, preferably, conflict-averse -- response to such a situation?

Thanks for the help!

- AnnaRay.

shameless plug

One of my brilliant and talented roommates from college performs under the stage name Kid Beyond. I've tried many times to explain what he does to many people; they nod their heads politely, and when their eyes glaze over, that's my cue to say, "You've really got to see him live - he's freakin' brilliant!" Which is their cue to say, "Yeah, he sounds awesome," and smile indulgently.

Well, now you can see the Kid work his magic. The company that makes the software he uses on stage has made a promotional video. If your eyes glaze over while watching this, I'll give you a dollar.

I'm a believer

I believe I witnessed a bona fide miracle today. Maybe two.

The traffic lights near the campus where I teach weren't working, and I had to pass through three intersections under the dark and useless things as they swung gently in the gale force winds we've been experiencing of late. These weren't just any intersections; all three involved streets with five lanes of traffic, and two were at the entrance and exit ramps of I-5. Did I mention I had to make left turns at two of them? There were no cops to direct the traffic - NO REGULATING AUTHORITY FIGURES OF ANY KIND! - and yet I was able to sail through unscathed, because each driver, upon pulling up to the intersection, waited patiently for his or her turn to go, as if this exercise were no more complicated than negotiating a neighborhood four-way stop.

I can think of no explanation other than divine intervention that could have caused all these people in cars to act with such harmony in the communal interest. Or maybe folks out here are just laid back to the point of weirdness.

All this happened under clear blue skies, which brings me to the second miracle. The sun has been shining here for days, and it's glorious. There hasn't been a cloud in sight, and flowers are popping up everywhere. Or maybe they've been there all along, and I just haven't noticed as I walk by with my head down to keep the rain out of my eyes. Whatever - yesterday, I put The Boy on my bike and as we rode to the park we passed a stretch along the path that was carpeted in purple crocuses.

Glorious.

One of those weeks

We've been very bad this week. Sorry about that. There's really no excuse for the radio silence except that I'm working too much, and Judybat has been a flurry of household and classroom activity and I'm embarassed because TheBoy's favorite new word is "damnit."

At some point soon, I'll tell you about that. But for now, I'm going to be off in a corner, hanging my head in potty-mouthed shame.

All grown up and no way to know

My stress dreams still involve tests that I haven't studied for, or end-of-term papers that I had all semester to work on but didn't and are due tomorrow. For a while when I was a photographer, they were all about showing up for an assignment without film, (remember film?) but it wasn't long before my subconscious led me back to high school or, at best, college.

It's funny, because I just spent the weekend with a bunch of my college buddies, many of whom I haven't seen in years, and I was talking with one of them about how our being together like that makes us revert to our younger selves. It's true that I did find myself playing a drinking game that involved quarters, lots of spilled beer and rules that strike me now as, at best, juvenile, but I don't feel like I reverted.

It pains me to think of how insecure I was in college. This weekend, all my old friends exclaimed how I hadn't changed a bit in all these years, but I know that's not the case. I feel much better about myself these days. I like to think my hair is better too, (thank you, ABBA.)

I don't feel like I was slipping back to my adolescent self because, self assurance and fabulous locks aside, I don't feel like I ever left it. Even with a three-year-old kid at my side, I am constantly forgetting that I am an adult. Maybe it's the clothes. One of the reasons I became a photographer was so I wouldn't have to buy a suit, and I spent the better part of my professional career running around with cameras and other expensive toys. Now the toys I play with have been downgraded to primary-colored plastic objects, but I still don't have to put on a suit.

Some of my friends this weekend were talking about investments and real estate and multi-million-dollar business deals, and I thought, Jesus! You people sound like my father! Forget about the fact that I heard my mother's words coming out of my own mouth as we all talked about our kids; I still cannot relate to adult conversation. By adult conversation, I think I mean the kind held by people who go to work in nice clothes and live in houses filled with furniture not bought from Ikea or Craig's List.

Maybe one day I'll feel like a grown-up. Though, if having a kid and buying a house hasn't done it for me, I'm not sure what will.

Dream, dream, dream

When I was a child, I had this recurring dream in which I was lost in a creepy, dark and very large house and needed to find my way out. It wasn't exactly a nightmare, beacuse although there was this overall sense of forboding, I wasn't exactly scared. As I got older, say into my teenage years, I figured out that this dream tended to pop up whenever I was especially worried. This was my stress dream.

Then I got a summer newspaper internship, and managed to be out of town the weekend that plane crashed in Charlotte. Huge news, great opportunity to impress potential employers . . . and I'm at the beach. Suddenly, my stress dream changed: The not-quite-scary, but-certainly-frustrating house was replaced by a more adult set of fears and angst: I'm in an airport, or near one, about to go on a trip. Sometimes, the challenge is making my flight. I can't find the gate, or traffic is blocking me, or the plane has left before I've arrived. Sometimes, I make the plane, and it crashes. But it's not the crash that's the problem -- the real dilemma is figuring out how to cover the crash while I'm on board.

Freaky, right? Well, last week, it got even better. When Judybat and I went snowboarding -- ow, ow, ow -- a few weeks ago, my mother and the O.A.F.S. stayed with the kid. They did a marvelous job keeping him healthy and entertained, except when my mother decided to teach TheBoy that coming to Grandma's house means going to Disney World, where he can see his friends, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pooh Bear and Piglet. For a week, we heard nothing from TheBoy but "Want to go to Grandma to see Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pooh Bear and Piglet. When are we going? Are we going now?"

This was highly effective and very annoying marketing on my mother's part. (Seriously, Saatchi & Saatchi should give her a call.) And so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised the other night when the airport of my dreams morphed into Disney World. I had a plane to catch . . . but I was stuck in line for Space Mountain. I was late . . . but I couldn't figure out which monorail would get me to the terminal. I was almost there . . . when a very evil-looking Minnie Mouse blocked my way.

My subconcious isn't anywhere near 'sub' enough.




P.S. We're flying to L.A. for the weekend for a Super Bowl bash. Yes, we know the Super Bowl isn't actually in L.A. No, I'm not taking the kid to Disneyland while we're there. That place gives me the creeps.

Why we fight

Perhaps it's the weather -- Hmm, it seems to be raining again. How odd for Portland in winter? -- or the nasty cold/flu/general unwellness I'm suffering from, but the world just seems like a dangerous and screwed-up place right now. We're destroying the environment, we're undoing all the good things Earl Warren did, Sister Coretta died, World War III is about to break out in the Middle East, etc. etc. Plus, as much as I want our troops to come home and Iraq not to turn into even more of a Vietnam-like mess, there are some fundamental threats to our way of life -- say that while doing your best George Bush impression -- out there.

Case in point, this story..

I respect your right to worship your God in pretty much whatever way you'd like. But, coward that I am, I'd for damned sure pick up a gun to defend my beloved First Amendment.