The Second Place

Great Parenting Moment

2007-07-08T17:15:00.000-07:00

A recent great parenting moment was walking in the door with a new load of books from the library (on ants, and I Spy and the bushel-and-a-peck song illustrated by the Max & Ruby lady), and having the Jumping Bean literally gasp with pleasure.

How can you not love a kid who loves books so much, I ask you?

Spank or Thank?

2007-05-14T18:41:00.001-07:00

Do we spank or thank the cat who throws up on the credit card bill?

That's a Relief

2007-02-27T14:13:00.000-08:00

JB is pooping in her pullups (don't ask), and I am pretending to flinch, hands over face, like I do when she sneezes without covering. And she says, reassuringly, "I'm not going to poop on your head!"

Where's Aba?

2007-02-26T07:23:00.000-08:00

Jumping Bean: Where's Aba?

Eema: I think he went to work today. It's Monday. Do you miss him?

JB: But how can he be at work when I am still here with you?

E: Do you want to call him on the phone and say good morning?

JB: I think maybe he's hiding in the closet or something.

Awwwww.

JB had her first eye exam yesterday. She loved it, but would have loved it more if allowed to play with all the ultracool doctor tools. Her eyesight is perfect at this point, but keep your fingers crossed. Mine was too when I was tiny.

Public health covers annual eye exams for kids only. Adults have to pay, so I think many people are just getting the mini-check now at the quickie eyeglass places. It'll be interesting to see the implications of that play out on a country-wide scale. Meantime, we shell out, because our eyes are bad enough already.

emPHAsis

2007-02-21T18:08:00.000-08:00

Why is the paragraph about the American women kidnapped in the West Bank on page 10, but the full article with photo about the local girl who called 911 when her pregnant mom had a seizure is on page 1?

Jumping Bean news

2007-02-21T09:01:00.000-08:00

When upset:
I'm not happy about it!
It's not fair!
I'm very upset!
You need to listen!
We need to talk about it!

Imaginary friends:
Ghostie (the ghost)
My hockey team

Recent quotes, note she still says "teachah" for teacher and "vewwy" for very.:
I'm a matcher, not a searcher! (when playing a matching game)
You're a very good teacher! (She's so encouraging.)
You're doing that verry well!
I'm going to throw these at your vagina when you push out a new baby!

Okay, that last one is complicated. She had dug some tampons out of a drawer, and offered me one. I explained that I won't get another period for a long time, because I was pregnant and am now nursing, so my uterus doesn't need to clean itself, blah blah blah. So I think she got that you don't need tampons while you're pregnant, she thinks a period is a fun thing, and then she conflated with the way people throw candy at a bar mitzvah boy when he's done reading. Hence, throwing tampons at me after I have a baby. I think that's what happened here.

Recent accomplishments:
Ice skating with Aba for 45 minutes!!

Dreamlog I

2006-10-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

She said she went to a different shul and they didn't like the noise the sky was making. The sky was spinning. A wheel made the sky spin. She said a pie was making the noise. There was a dragon that came and scratched her nose and tickled her. The sky made a noise and she put her head down in the water.

The night before, there was a snail in the bed. (Given the crying that followed, it was very scary.)

Why the cricket song?

2006-10-18T22:47:00.000-07:00

Things have been very quiet around here for two reasons:

First, I'm pregnant again, and due in December.

Second, my grandfather has had months of horrible health problems. He lives over a thousand miles away. I am his medical power of attorney, and my whackaloon mother is his financial power of attorney. It's been a time-consuming roadwreck.

A day both great and terrible

2006-03-26T20:32:00.000-08:00

So the husband is starting the week from hell tonight. A late hockey game, an early meeting, a one-day trip out of town, early meetings the next day straight through to dinnertime, etc. We aren't going to see him much, so today was a big family day and my last day to get a bit of extra rest before the fun start.

Before I went to bed last night, I said something like "Good night. Just to warn you, I am so tired that I will probably like for you to get her (the Bean) up in the morning so I can sleep in a bit. After all, we don't have to leave to swimming until almost 10." And he said ok.

So this morning, he woke up, heard that she was waking up, and wandered out of earshot without the baby monitor so that I had to wake up completely and shriek his name a half dozen times to get him back in the bedroom. He thought it was so late that there was no way I wanted more sleep. It was 7 AM, and you're damn skippy I wanted more sleep. I know, it's an honest mistake and I am a bitch from hell, but he has made mistakes that limit my sleep at least once or twice a month for the past two years. He locks cats in the room with me, or wakes me way before I need to be up, or wanders off, or won't get up in the first place, and so on. So we snitted at each other over that, made up, and had a nice breakfast together as a family.

Then onto swimming. We had a blast as usual, with the Bean jumping off walls and pool steps onto me, laughing when I got wet and spluttered, chasing toys around, getting tivkled by our beloved swim teacher and so on. Unfortunately, the heat in the pool was left off overnight, so we had to leave class early because the Bean just got too cold. I tried the hottub, but she started chanting "WAN NA NURSE! WAN NA NURSE!" until we went and showered and nursed. We saw all sorts of people we know in the locker room and pool. It was great. The husband came and got her right after I got her dressed, and they played in the free gym until I got dressed.

It was a bit tought getting her down for her nap, and the husband and I got in another fight while she was sleeping. He got us tickets to a family-friendly (for charity, no cussing and fist fights) hockey game this afternoon. It was the local JCC all-stars against some local pro-team alumni. I asked in the car on the way home from swimming if it was okay if we got there late, and the husband said it was fine, that the game would last about two hours. Fine.

As I may have mentioned, I was very tired today and didn't get to sleep in, so I laid down with the girl during her nap. The husband ended up walking her to sleep, because she wouldn't go down for me. (When he finally laid her down, she said "wanna nurse" in her sleep. What a little boob junkie she is.) I had a nap, and lunch and tidied up downstairs while she was still sleeping. I came upstairs to the husband who suddenly says, "Well, I guess it's too late to go to the game." I didn't understand why, because the game had only started a half hour before... how could we have missed it? Why didn't he tell me we were approaching some deadline? He just had decided it wouldn't work out. He wouldn't ask me to wake the girl (after more than 2 hours of nap!) because it might upset me. He wouldn't think of packing food to take, so he was thinking she had to eat at home when she woke up. He told me it would be a two-hour game, but really it could be only an hour. And so on. And I got pissed again, because he won't talk to me no matter what. I am just too scary to talk to, even though I am generally mad because he withheld information and opinions from me, not because I didn't like the opinions and information I finally dragged out of him.

I basically insisted that we wake the Bean and try to go, because I told her all day we were going. So I woke her and he packed her lunch, and we went. And it was fabulous. We didn't miss it at all. It was the middle of the second period when we got there. The girl stuffed her face and watched the game. She loved when play would stop, because they play all this heavy rock music during the breaks. I'm telling you, love is watching your 2-year-old shake her booty to ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man". Then we got to see the Zamboni and the mascot between periods.

It had gotten a little late to go home and cook dinner, so we had an early dinner out instead. The girl was very excited to being going to a restaurant. She got to sit in a booster, and draw with crayons, and stand in the booth and wave at people walking by, and eat fries with ketchup and drink from a straw and have dessert. Very exciting.

Then we came home and she and the husband read through a huge pile of hand-me-down books that our dear friends just gave us today. Finally, it was bathtime, which was cut short by the girl screaming to get out because she "saw eyes floating in the bath." I kid you not. I'm still not sure what she actually saw, but it may have been her own reflection.

So the husband has gone to hockey, and I need to get to bed. It just struck me as I was lying down with the girl waiting for her to go to sleep what a bittersweet day it was. The girl won't remember these early days, but I will. I love the things we do together. I just wish so much that the husband and I could enjoy these days together and that he could feel I am on his side and vice versa, instead of struggling with each other all the freaking time. I am so tired of it.

Everyone should have such troubles

2006-01-23T19:47:00.000-08:00

My husband recently interviewed for a job near my hometown, which is about 1200 miles south of here. I have a list of reasons why moving south would be the right thing for our family. One of these is that we no longer have a religious community to call our own, because we have left the shul where we were very involved until about a year ago. It was such a part of our lives, of our development as people, as spouses and as parents that I long to belong somewhere again. And none of the other shuls in town really suit us.

Yet I have such a contrary nature that, once the man had found an interesting position to try for, I immediately started making a mental list of all the things I love about living here. I love the house we rent. I love my doctor, doula, chiroprator, dentist and hairdresser. I am just a tiny bit difficult, so this is a minor miracle in itself. I know all the people who run all the kosher groceries and restaraunts in town. I know the people at the market and the post office and the library. I know the people in my neigh-bor-hood, my neigh-bor-hood, my neigh-bor-ho-od!

I was not raised having these kinds of connections. I was raised to defend against anyone knowing too much about us. We lied about our address so that my father could not find and kidnap us. We didn't have people over to the house. The back gate had a padlock on it, and when the poor meter man would come to read the meter, my mother would pretend we weren't home. My mother considered the cashiers and clerks and deliverymen of our world beneath us. We were pretty isolated.

I was visiting with a friend today, and I was suprised to hear myself say that here, in this town, I have "too many friends". And of course that's not really what I mean. That brings to mind a mob of people chasing my limo down the street, battering the windows in the vain hope of getting an instant of personal contact with me in the brief seconds between the car window breaking and the crush of people killing me.

What I mean is that I have a lot of people that I am friendly with, that are something a bit more than acquaintances, but a bit less than bosom friends. Many of these people I'd like to know better, but the combination of our schedules (many work and have kids, some with special needs) means that we end up getting together infrequently - every few months rather than every few weeks. I talk to stangers, so I meet people at the park, at baby classes, at the cafe in the JCC. I know ex-classmates from two degrees, ex-coworkers, Jews at six synagogues, neighbors, people from baby classes, LLL, the local AP group, people that were originally my husband's friends at school, some of my husband's relatives, etc. I rarely go to the park or drop-in gym or a new baby class anymore without recognizing someone.

And sure, not everyone is destined to be a close friend. Often, someone will ask about the Bean nursing, or my use of a sling, or if I'm bored at home with "nothing to do" or whatever, and they'll comment on what I "need" to do to correct my parenting deficiences. And I will realize that I am not talking to a kindred spirit. But at this point, I still know way more lovely people than I can be close to at once. I know enough that I end up making little lists of who to call for fear that Debra's new, beautiful son will be walking before I haul myself over there with a baby gift.

I have no idea how long it would take me to settle in to this extent if we do move south. Since I never had this kind of pool of acquaintances and friends growing up, it seems like this delicate, precious thing to me. I want to believe it is just the result of living in the present and being friendly to people as they come and go around me. But I fear it would be hard to rebuild something similar elsewhere. But, regardless of the truth about this point, shouldn't everyone have such troubles?

Happy birthday to me

2005-11-20T21:01:00.000-08:00

I believe that when the Bean was born, Hashem put a new heart in my chest. Then and since, the Bean has given me so many gifts of which she is unaware.

I was walking her to sleep tonight, and it was foggy. Although we are near the ocean, fog is quite unusual here, for reasons I don't understand. The fog was thick and creepy. The streetlights shone through the trees in distinct rays. It was beautiful.

There have been so many times in the past two years that I have been out with her and seen things I would not have otherwise. I was out for the lunar eclipse last October. For full moons and new moons. For sunsets and sunrises. I have been out at 3 AM, when no one else was. There was one times when I was followed and screamed at by some crows (new parents, G-d love 'em), but mostly being outside has been a sanity saver, a nerve tonic, a source of exercise and solitude and serenity that the indoors just does not bring to me.

I guess I could have walked like this for years. I am insomniac, after all. But I didn't. I read and watched TV and did endless nights of homework in front of the TV and eschewed exercise as nearly as possible. I felt ripped off if I had to walk somewhere without an errand in mind, and even for those I usually drove. In short, I pissed away those years of childlessness that could have been prime naval-gazing-and-toning time.

Hopefully, things will never be "back to normal". Happy birthday to me, from my sweet girl. I have no idea why Hashem would have entrusted me with such a great little person, but I am thankful.

She has a story to tell

2005-10-30T21:32:00.000-08:00

It feels strange that when you first have a baby, you come to know it better than you may have known anyone else in life without knowing the sound of its voice, aside from crying. It can't speak in a meaningful way for months, and babbles are just that.

As the Bean has gotten more words, we have grown accustomed to the sound of her voice. She falls asleep talking to her bear or baby in the stroller and she calls for us (or my breasts) by name in the night before she is even fully awake.

I have also noticed that she will review a situation that struck her particularly, as after her father chased a wasp out the door. "Wah? Wah? Bye-bye!" will be repeated at two minute intervals, maybe ten or fifteen times.

For some reason, she found it very striking that the local children's museum put an ink stamp on the back of her hand that took a couple of days to fade completely. Two months later, she will still point to the back of her hand and say, "Why? Why?"

And tonight, for the first time, I found that she was telling me in some detail about an incident that happened when her father had her at the play area at the mall, and I was not present. "Horsie! Around! Ride! Whee! Train! Choo-choo! Car! Beep! Horn! Plane! Ride! Fell! Ow! Pain! (or Playing, maybe?) Hole! Toe! Thumb! Ow! Fell! Down! Hole!" And so on, with dramatic gestures and pointing at body parts. And I repeated back to her what I thought she was saying, and elaborated into sentences.

But I don't actually know what happened, aside from that she rode on a mini-carousel, and enjoyed it until the point where someone put some money in and the thing moved. And then she got scared and her father had to follow her around in a little circle to keep her from diving off. And there are also car and train rides in that little area. What I don't know about is the falling and getting hurt. Was it even today that she is talking about? She falls all the time! Is the hole the carpeted Scream Pit at the mall where the kids play? I don't know. But she would have kept telling me at length had I not insisted that it was time to go for our walk and go to sleep. Which we did, and she did.

And when I got her sleeping self out of the stroller, and walked her up to bed, and laid her down, she stirred and spoke to me. She pointed at the back of her hand, and said, "Why? Why? Why?"

Dear Bubbe

2005-10-27T21:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Bubbe,

I am glad that the Bean finally is comfortable enough with you to sit on your lap, play with you and be sorry when you leave.

This does not mean that you should pester and pester and pester her to go sit on Zeyda's lap, or repeat after you the sentence "I like Zeyda". If she is saying "no-no-no", that means (roughly translated) "No".

You're creeping me out. Please stop before I have to get forceful about it and probably baffle you and hurt your feelings.

Sincerely,
Eema

October

2005-10-27T21:24:00.000-07:00

Shopping day
Cooking day
Rosh Hashannah I
Rosh Hashannah II
Shopping day
Cooking day
Shabbat
Sunday
Thanksgiving
Shopping day
Cooking day
Yom Kippur
Cooking day
Shabbat
Shopping day
Cooking day
Sukkot I
Sukkot II
Shopping day
Cooking day
Shabbat
Shopping day
Cooking day
Shemini Artzeret
Simhat Torah
Shopping day
Cooking day
Shabbat
Sunday
Halloween

A parrot walks into a bar

2005-10-11T08:00:00.000-07:00

A parrot walks into a bar with a duck under his arm, and he says, "Does anyone in here want a quacker?"

Stoopid Boyz

2005-09-12T07:15:00.000-07:00

So I was at a pretty darn expensive children's clothing store yesterday. They are a chain, and associated with a set of franchises that run pretty darn expensive exercise and art classes for children. I am hunting for an item that doesn't have some darling pattern or collar that renders it unfit to mix and match with the Bean's wild collection of fall hand-me-downs. There is a lady already at cash, and she is talking with the cashier. Their conversation goes something like this:

Woman "The problem is, what do we do about daddies and (store name)?"

Cashier "I know! They're so tense about money!"

Woman "Well, they don't really need to know what it costs, do they?"

(both laugh)

I have the unfortunate habit of hearing things and not reacting to them until much later, so I didn't really register the whole thing until this morning. I just woke up thinking, "Why is the cat howling next to the Bean's sleeping head for no visible reason?" And after that, I thought, "What was with those women in (store name) yesterday?"

When did we decide that fathers don't need to be informed, much less involved, in what goes on with their kids? Aren't they putting money in? Don't they get to have an opinion about whether or not pretty darn expensive classes are worth pinching pennies in other places? And even more fundamentally, how must that woman feel about fathers (and the father of her kid in particular) to stand right there in public and be so openly dismissive of them and him?

And can exercise and art classes really undo for that woman's children the low regard she has for the brain power of the opposite sex? It's really not that hard to grasp that the family might still be able to eat while the kids attend expensive classes, unless Mrs. Disdainful doesn't want to cut corners anywhere else to make up for it. So how does this reflect on her son's intellectual power? On her daughter's attitudes?

It's sad.

Baby fat

2005-09-01T13:20:00.000-07:00

I am overweight. I have been for years. My husband and his family are not fat. I heard some concerned comments while I was pregnant that I might produce a fat child, particularly after one of the husband's cousins produced a (sweet, happy, healthy) fat baby only a year before ours was born. The experts were called out. The little baby slippers couldn't fit on her pudgy little ankles. She was wearing rolled-up toddler clothes as an infant. Fat like that.

So I would've hoped that everyone would breathe a sigh of relief when my daughter was born, and remains, between the 25th and 50th percentiles of weight in the archetypal group of standard babies. And then they could all SHUT UP. But of course not. They (meaning mainly my mother-in-law) discuss in great detail what the Bean eats and doesn't eat every single meal and snack that they witness.

Aren't you going to give her some formula "just in case"? (Just in case what?) Aren't you going to pump 4-oz bottles for her? That's the how much babies "should" drink each time. She's a "good eater" today, or not. She likes this fruit, or not. Don't we want to offer her some cheese? No? Well, then we MUST have fed her earlier. (Otherwise, what?) Thank God she's not fat like you-know-who (above). Why won't she sit with us for the whole time we are slowly eating and having adult conversation? Don't you have her on cow's milk yet? Soon you'll have milk in a cup, Bean, and then your mother can just drop you off over here! (No, I won't.) Why isn't she hungry?

And so on.

Now, none of the comments are really horrible, in my opinion, except the comparisons to her older cousin. What I think is a really bad idea is that the Bean gets to listen to all this, and while she is young, she is not stupid.

I myself was born normal weight. I remained thin until third grade when my parents divorced and my mother and grandmother started a tug-of-war over my diet. My mom insisted on low-carb all-natural everything, except on all holidays, birthdays and mom's-in-a-mood days, when absolute tons of chocolates would rain from the Heavens like manna. And if I wouldn't eat breakfast, she would force feed me. It's a wonder none of my teeth are chipped. My grandmother never, ever thought any of us ate enough, and would pester and pester about it. She would feed me basic, fatty, 4-food-group meals followed by huge desserts at every babysitting opportunity. And lie to my mother about it. And encourage me to do the same.

Result being that I became a seeker, hoarder, and binger of sweets. I would go crazy when visiting others' houses where guests were allowed to regulate their own dessert portions. I would steal change from my mom's purse if I thought I might get access to a candy machine someplace. I would eat sugar cubes or chunks of brown sugar if I could. I still enjoy eating sweets more when no one is around to see me, and I feel guilty when I don't leave enough for my husband to enjoy, because I feel like I have to get while the getting is good.

I always felt like every bite I ate was under a microscope to be examined and criticised by my family. I tended towards anorexia as a teenager, and as an adult have been unable to bring myself to place even a healthy amount of focus on what passes my lips. The way many women examine their diets seems so self-hating to me, I just can't do it. But I am overweight, and that brings health risks and self-image problems, and difficulties finding cute clothes. Or even comfortable clothes, sometimes.

I don't want this bizarre hyper-focus aimed at the Bean. I realize my family is on the extreme side in this, and in so many other ways! But I still think that a girl doesn't need to start hearing about whether her butt is fat when there is still a diaper on it.

I heard a recommendation awhile ago that is my current ideal: it is my job to offer a variety of tasty, nutritious food. It is the Bean's job to decide how much and when she will eat that food. I realize that older children need an education about food and exercise choices and taking good care of their bodies, but I think toddlerhood is a bit early for all that. And even if it were not, I don't think that the in-laws have any such educational goals in mind when making their comments. So I don't think my mother-in-law needs to run off at the mouth about what the Bean eats, while the Bean has to listen to it. I just can't imagine anything positive coming of it. So the question is, how and to what extent should I crack down on it? Time and my backbone will tell.

The thing the experts don't tell you about newborns

2005-08-28T11:50:00.000-07:00

I always feel badly for a new mom when I see her struggling to get the little one on a schedule. There are so many books (and friends, and grandmothers, and meddling perfect strangers) out there claiming that schedules are the answer to preventing sleep, feeding, discipline, and basically all other possible problems.

The thing I generally find lacking in the scheduling philosophy is a recognition that a newborn is
a) a newborn, and
b) an individual human being.

I hear a lot of astonishment from the new mom set that the baby sometimes wants to eat every hour all afternoon. Or that their first nap falls an hour after waking up in the morning. Or that if the parents don't pay attention to the baby's preferred schedule and the baby misses a nap, the baby will promptly come unhinged.

I know, I was astonished too, because I read the same books as everyone else. And I expected that I would be molding my baby like a little pink lump of play dough. What I actually experienced was that the baby shaped me. It was like being in a really loud Skinner box. She would freak and I would try stuff until something changed and allowed her to relax, or poop, or sleep, or eat, or whatever she was needing. And pretty soon, I got better at figuring out the puzzle.

It makes me sad to see new moms staggering along under a load of self-or-other imposed restrictions on their baby care. Some won't pick the baby up. Some won't feed the baby until it's "time", and then cut off the feed after a small, fixed number of minutes so the baby will feed efficiently during feedings and not at all in between. Some feel it teaches self-soothing skills to let the baby cry to sleep from a very young age. And so on.

I'm sure some babies are naturally easy to schedule, or tend to be self-soothers, and then this all works out fine. But many babies are, well, babies, and will resist with all their tiny might. So my thought is that the best course is to first go with the baby's schedule and figure out who this little person is that you're dealing with, and later on introduce your own preferences into the mix. The idea that we can tell a newborn when to be hungry seems as silly to me as the idea that we can tell them when to pee. We cannot ultimately control who our kids are, and the sooner we get used to that idea, the better.

Milk Guilt

2005-08-19T15:09:00.000-07:00

I am currently breastfeeding a toddler with no firm plans to wean. I support and encourage breastfeeding for all kinds of reasons, but I won't drag out my soapbox right now. I just want to say that I find it sad that, no matter how much we do for our children, moms still feel guilty for not doing more. We seem to have a collective certainty that there is a such a thing as a perfect mom, and that we are just one step away from child abuse if we don't embody that perfection 24-7-365.

Case in point: I was at a local mall, in the kids' area (a carpeted hole in the floor that I refer to as the 'scream pit') and I noticed a mum with a three-year-old boy and a new baby. She was sitting at the side of the pit supervising the elder and nursing the younger. The baby reminded me so of the Bean at that age that I went over to chat. I asked the mom about her nursing experience, and she said that she had not had to wean her first to make room for the second. In fact, the boy was born with a cyst under his tounge and couldn't latch. She pumped milk for his bottles for nine (NINE) 9! months, and lost and regained her supply more than once before finally quitting. The part that raised my eyebrows was that she seemed somewhat embarassed to say that she had only provided the little guy with nine months of breastmilk.

Now, I've pumped, and let me just share with you that it's a pain in the ass. It can hurt. It is much less efficient in a volume-production sense than nursing a baby, so you end up doing massage and hot compresses and shaking the tree and so on to try to get more out. You have to sterilize the pump parts in addition to all the bottles and nipples. You can't hold the baby while doing it, and babies don't carry on conversations across rooms very well. This lady was pumping for 20 minutes, every hour and a half for months and doesn't know she deserves a medal?

Insanity.

The not-so-clever-ness of me

2005-08-18T12:24:00.000-07:00

When I was setting up this blog, I thought of a number of oh-so-clever names for it. I felt somehwat less clever upon finding out that someone else had already thought of them, usually with multiple variations. I felt even less clever than that on finding that most of the owners of those blogs had set them up months or years ago, and then never written a single post. I stopped feeling at all clever when I finally found the long-stale blog of someone who did post for a time, and found that all the posts read like this:

so we went to the bar, right? and we played, but they threw bottles at us, so now we need yore help, charlie is in the hospital with stitches, and they wont let him out until we pay, but the bar owner wont pay us, so pass the hat people, next week we play another dive, and we need charlie alright

and so on.

At least he stopped, so I am saved the jail time I would have received for tracking him down and smacking him until he promised to use periods.

Wireless Buyout - Act II

2005-08-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

I got a cryptic, automated message from my new wireless/cable company. It said "This is us. Call us back regarding your wireless service at X number."

So my curiosity got the better of me, and I called. I got another automated message saying that the payment on my overdue balance had not been received. Oh, crap. This is the end of our good credit rating. We really are going to have to eat cat food in retirement, it's not just some bad joke I make. Did I drop the ball on the bill? Crap, crap, crap...

Then the system asked me for my postal code, but couldn't recognize it. Then I got a live voice that couldn't find my cel number anywhere in the system. Then I remembered that the entire phone bill, which is for a home-cel-long distance bundle, is automatically paid. So I calmed down and realized that there is no late bill. The late bill is a red herring, sent to distract me, but from what?

I tried to explain this to the nice lady, but she caught on to the fact that we have a different bundle for cable and Internet through the same company. She latched on to the word "bundle" and hung on for dear life so she could shunt me to the bundle department while reassuring me that they would know much more. It should surprise no one at this point that the bundle department had never heard of me, either. So they shunted me to the same customer service department that my husband dealt with in Act I, where I held for 15 minutes. Then the Bean's nap ended before another nice, clueless voice could get on the line. I still don't know why they called in the first place.

And this ends Act II.

Wireless Buyout - Act I

2005-08-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

So my wireless company has been bought out by my cable company, with some interesting results.

The voicemail on my cel phone stopped working. You'd think this would've excited a flurry of nasty phone calls from other subscribers to the new company, and that by the time I got around to doing anything the issue would have been long since resolved. Not so. I got at least three messages telling me that I might have to face the inconvenience of manually choosing the new network on my handset, or that the network name might vary. With an effort, I controlled my alarm over such prospects. But then the voicemail crapped out, and I tried to call the company.

Before, one of those numbers beginning with * would access the voicemail from the handset, so my question for the new company was simple: "What's the new number?" I sat on hold twice until the Bean needed me, and then my husband came home and he gave it a go. He wanted to call from the home phone, so he naively looked up a toll-free support number on the wireless website. He then held until the system hung up on him a couple of times, and finally got a live voice which informed him he'd been calling the wrong number.

So he called the right number and after holding again, finally got another voice belonging to a lady who had no idea about the old voicemail number ("Can't you just hold down the '1' on the handset?") or what its replacement might be ("I have a number for use from a land line... I don't know if it'll work from the cel. Most people use a land line.") . It turned out the land line number worked, and that concludes Act I.