We headed to the Brewers game tonight. Swine flu fears be damned, the place was sold out. 42,000+ people watched the Brewers lose lose lose. And it wasn’t the losing that made me think of the Cubs. The crowd was 20-somethings, drunk and overly dressed in Brewers gear. They were polite drunks for the most part. The wave was started by two enthusiastic guys, but by 3 sections over, the crowd was too cool to raise their arms. There were a lot of kids running around. Kids as in 22 year olds and kids as in 7 year olds. We only brought 2. The “5 County 5 game” promotion increased the number of families, I would assume. Half price seats means that it is easier to bring twice as many kids, right?  These are 5 days to make up for the 360 days in which every taxable good costs more to pay for Miller Park. Despite saving $56 over our 4 seats, I am not convinced I came out ahead. And I am not even opposed to taxes as a political, theoretical or rational position.

The game was a tough one. The sort of plays that make baseball hard for me to enjoy. Bernie Brewer did not slide to celebrate home runs. Henry and I missed the Diamondbacks spectacular half inning, and it frustrates me to have all of the action compressed into 10 minutes. And we lost.

I think I would have enjoyed the game more if the concessions were better marked or more evenly distributed. We had to walk forever far away to find nachos and cotton candy. And we couldn’t find soft pretzels, despite seeing people in the crowd eating them. I suppose the marketing and placement of food matters less when your crowd is drinking. It still irked me and I think I drove a nice woman at the closest concession stand crazy by approaching her stand 3 times to ask for food she didn’t sell.

After the game, as we sat in the parking lot and inched our way onto 94, Miranda thought we should rank the evening high, middle or low. On a scale of 3, Rob and I chose high. Miranda and Henry chose middle. The game felt long and all the cotton candy Mom can buy won’t fix that.

Hello from the tunnel inside my head. Where does the tunnel go? One would hope – I would hope -  the tunnel goes to the outside world. But maybe not. It may be more like the People Mover in Detroit, on a  little sad loop.

The antibiotics have batted back the illness in my sinuses, nose, throat. My ears don’t hurt. Instead, they feel like they need to be popped. Like when we flew to SF in May and my ears didn’t unpop the whole 5 day visit. I am on day 6 of the home game. I don’t like it.

The only plus I have found at all is that if I think the TV is too loud, I know without a doubt that I am right. And the kids can’t claim they can’t hear it. As the pain of the ear infection has left, I am thinking of crazy ways to clean out my Eustachian tube. I wonder if an airplane trip would help. Or diving. Or Scuba! What? I can hear most things, it is just the whisper or quiet aside that is lost. And I want to find it again. Maybe I could find it on a trip to somewhere warm…

There seems to be a practical joker in our midst. On Monday night, I felt horrible. My cold turned up the volume and filled my ears with fluids. I crawled into bed and slept for 9 hours. At 4am, I was warm. And uncomfortable. The blankets were all wrong. I went back to sleep. In the morning, Miranda asked Rob if he noticed anything about his bed last night? And he said that he barely slept in the bed between my sickly snoring and the cries of the children. Oh, she said, you did notice I short sheeted your bed?

So that was 1.

Yesterday, my mom reached for some Cheerios for Bella. This was after I went to the doctor and came home with an antibiotic for my double ear infection. My mom found the Cheerios bag in the Raisin Bran box and the Raisin Bran bag in the Cheerios Box. Laugh Out Loud!

Was that 2?

I went to sleep early again. As an aside – could that be my problem – “Going to bed before 11 ruins woman’s health, news at 11?”  And I woke up with my eyes stuck shut with oozy goo. Pink Eye. Lovely. As loyal readers know, Bella had pink eye last week. Urgent Care was doubtful I would have caught it from her now now. The doctor prescribed some lovely drops. And I can see again!

And I can only hope that there were no shenanigans planting germs for the worst practical joke ever. Or Miranda will never leave her room again.

In other news:

Urgent Care was hilarious as always. We were the first patients, I think. Rob was a sweetheart and drove me there and did the touching of all of the paper so I contaminated fewer surfaces. I had been keeping my eye closed and not wiping it so it had the full effect. The urgent care doctor started by saying that most conjunctivitis is viral. But this is not. This is classic bacterial. We then somehow discussed hand sanitizer. He told us about refusing to shake hands with patients who come in for STD examinations and then don’t wash their hands. And how he won’t eat at fairs because of the lack of hand washing and the high potential for food contamination. He went on and on. I guess we weren’t visually blanching enough at his fecal matter comment that he said, the young people working there don’t wipe and then they make food. So fecal matter, you know, poop gets on your food.

So true.

In retrospect, I only wish he had asked Rob, who was dressed for work, what he did. And then Rob could have said, “Oh, I’m a fair promoter.”

I’d have paid money for that one.

I may not have my health on my 33rd birthday, but I do have my sense of humor, my loving family and an active imagination.

On the bright side…

I wasn’t home when Henry threw up yesterday.

Miranda had a friend over, had a great time, and her friend left before the power went out.

We found my mom a pink Electra Townie bike for her birthday and we only had to drive to Sheboygan Falls to buy it.

My mom had a lovely birthday today. We had Costco chocolate chocolate cake.

The basement did not flood yesterday while the power was off for 4 hours through the heroic efforts of Rob and my parents.

Our neighbors were swell and hooked us up to their generator to run one of our sump pumps.

The Ace hardware stayed open an extra 5 minutes so I could rent a generator to run our second sump pump.

Despite not having heat for 4 hours and opening the door repeatedly, the hosue was only 69 degrees when the pwoer came back on. Score one for our general high temperature setting.

Henry slept through the majority of the power outage. (He was running a fever and that was concerning, but this is the bright side and having one less person complaining about all of the things she can’t do without electricity is a good thing.)

Miranda learned much more about electricity.

It didn’t rain today on my mom’s actual birthday. The horrible wintry snow-sleet mix that fell while I rushed to Ace melted.

Arabella is 6 months old today. She got 3 shots plus 1 oral vaccine to potentially save her life, someday.

Miranda had to write about her experience in a storm in school today. And she had one:

“Yesterday on 3/8/09, My family’s power went out. I had to take care of my baby sister 6 months for half an our because my mom was at the store. cause the electricity was out so our sum-pump didn’t work so our basement almost flooded. So while my grandma was filling buckets with water my dad was carying them up the stairs and outside. My grandpa was poring the buckets of water outside. When the power first went off I was a little afraid to youse the toylet cause grandpa would have to pour water into it.”

Or maybe not, as I don’t have the expertise, experience or desire. But I did file my taxes last night. And today. I am a late comer to this crazy online thing called eFile. The IRS seemingly forced the tax prep software companies to give you free federal eFiles. But they could still charge for the state, which Turbo Tax still wanted $19.95 for. As a small business owner, I already pay for the most expensive Turbo Tax product.  I have stubbornly mailed in my taxes, federal and state, for the last, well, forever. I am annoyed enough that my interest-free government loan seems to get larger each year. Paying money to get my money…no thanks. (I realize I have annoyed all of the accountants I know. I’m sorry.)

The state of Wisconsin skirts ever closer to the line of just offering free online tax software. (I think there is a law that prevents them for  just doing this – I had to type in a lot, but they did all of the math and even the calculations.) And a free eFile. Rob let me prattle on with my worries and wonder if I could TurbTax the feds and use the state website for the state. And let me say, having done it, you can! I hope. It looks like it was accepted.

Taxes bring out my neuroses about screwing up and having very bad things happen. I think I am following the rules – I certainly am not planning to defraud, cheat or lie. But could I have made an error egregious enough to have a tax judge or the newspaper doubt my stupidity? I don’t want to go to jail! Or owe anyone other than my mortgage company hundreds or even tens of thousands of dollars!

On the bright side, our interest free loan to the government was up this year only because of Arabella. It turn out the cash payment last summer, was only preliminarily based on 2007 taxes. Babies born in 2008 will net you another $300. In addition, she brought us another child tax credit.

Over the years, we have owed the IRS more money than I thought I could save in 3 months. In other years, we have gotten back large-to-me amounts. It does make the first run-through of the taxes sort of exciting. What’s a word that means exciting in a roller-coaster sort of way, during which you may laugh, scream or vomit? I usually dilly-dally with the information from January until March. This year, the 8-14 days direct deposit come-one marketing effort from the IRS paid off. I looked them over. I was delighted that the state came up with the exact same numbers as Turbo Tax. And I clicked the button in TurboTax and again from the state.

I just hope I survive the vetting.

Hallelujah! The groundhog has seen his shadow! Only 6 more weeks of winter!

What?

You don’t think of it that way? That the shadow is a bad thing and that winter will drag on for 6 more weeks.

You don’t live in Wisconsin.

The snow has taken a (probably, pessimistically short) break. I think it has been 2 weeks since snow fell. This is the longest reprieve since, well, November. It has been a snowy winter. I am tired of it. In 2000, when Rob’s mom was ill and we were driving back to Milwaukee every weekend and some days in between, we had the snowiest December on record. Then we moved to Milwaukee and it stopped snowing. It was a treat to show snow to Miranda as a baby and toddler. In fact, the snow stayed away until we moved to Cedarburg in 2007. The fact that we do not have enough garage space here and so we have to clean off the snowy cars is not lost on me.  Last year, we had the second snowiest winter on record (96 inches). The snowiest winter was 1885-86. They suffered under 109 inches of snow. When it gets really cold and inhospitable in winter, while I am snug in my house heated by the forced air gas furnace, I try to imagine how cold, wet, yucky and tiring snow would have been in the 19th century. But I have to admit, I think nearly everything would have been tiring in the 19th century.

Miranda and Texas Blue Bonnets

6 weeks from today is March 16th, a full week before spring is even supposed to start. And about 4 weeks before I would expect spring to spring around here. I’d love to see spring peeking green buds on the trees and tulips making their locations known. We drove to Texas in late March 2005. We watched spring blossom like a time-lapse photography movie. It was delightful. And then depressing to return to the brown and chilly north a week later.

As much as it would enrich my soul to think that we’re done with snow for 9-10 months, I think we’ll see more. And I will try to think positive things about snowmen, sledding, and snowshowing, while I am dreaming of green leaves, bicycling, and short sleeves. 6 weeks? I can only hope.

I had a dream the other night that was so surreal when I woke up I wrote it down. Not that all dreams aren’t surreal. I will preface it to say Phineas and Ferb is our new family show. “We’re getting the band back together” is one of my favorite episodes. One of the bandmates, Bobby Fabulous, has become a hairdresser. In my dream, I went to see cartoon Bobby after my last haircut. I complained that it didn’t look like I had an $80 haircut. I have been flat-ironing my hair and in my dream, I had them wavy natural, not smooth. Bobby played with my hair and said soothingly, no, not an $80 haircut. It looks like an $120 haircut. It is so fabulous you don’t even need to style it.

I don’t believe Bobby Fabulous, in my dream or in Danville. Or even Bobby Fabulous as the embodiment of my id. Super ego?

I did get a haircut at a real salon the other day. I had previously tried to get my haircut twice at strip mall salons. I seem to have lost the critical language that convinces a stylist to actually cut my hair, much less shampoo and style it. The salon experience was fabulous. And I left with a nice cut for much less than $80. I have been running out of time to flat iron it. I think some part of me would encourage me to find the time.

Watching the Inauguration of Pres. Barack Obama has been fascinating. Inspiring. What a momentous day. I understand the impulse of millions to stand there. To be there. To be on the mall, watching, waiting, witnessing. I have so much hope. I respect Pres. Obama and I don’t think he won’t misstep, that he won’t err, that his decisions would always be my own. But I know he is a smart man, a brave man, an honorable man.

I am sick, a head cold/sinus thing. It kept me up last night – probably more awake than any night since I was in denial about being in labor with Arabella. I am glad I didn’t have any ambitions to watch the inauguration in a crowd. Sitting on the couch, sniffling, tearing up from watching the coverage of a president I believe in. I don’t think it will make the best story to tell Bella or Henry — but they’re watching with me.  And I hope that I’ll have reason to tell them about this inauguration. Not for its historical first-ness, but for its goodness.

And I hope that I am feeling better before we know what the first 100 days of Obama will bring. (This is whiny of me, I have been sick for less than 24 hours. And we have escaped illness this fall/winter. And Bella is less sick than I am. And my mom is home to take care of us all. But sickness makes you lose your perspective, doesn’t it? I don’t know if Bush was the worst president ever or merely in the bottom 10, but I know that we have had a national sickness. It has blinded us to our unity as Americans, it has distorted out values and our ability to communicate. And more than the war or the torture or the international ire or the backward policies on the environment, energy, and human rights…I am glad that Bush is leaving office and we can move on.)

I didn’t expect to be trendy in 2009. It has happened before–to date my desire for a third child fit into the ~2007 trend that 3 is the new 2.  But having my parents move in with us is a certifiable NYTimes anecdote-trend. Take some wealthy exceptions doing it fabulously. Add to it Pres-elect. Obama’s mother-in-law moving into the White House. I may have missed Lisa Belkin writing about it, but I think it is still a trend. And that I read the New York Times often.

EDITED TO ADD: I knew I had one more point of anec-data: Marvin, the daily comic. He maternal grandparents  moved in this year. Their move was tied to the economic bust, not as a loving help, but still–multi-generational households at work and play.

My parents built an addition to the house we bought. And my parents are retired and I am a freelance worker, who mostly stays home with kids. I think the NYTimes anec-trend is more about the mom who serve as child care and household management so her daughter can fully participate in her career, without having a stomach flu knock her to the mommy track.

Thinking about it this way, I think I should get a job as soon as possible. Or at least when Bella weans. Or when she’s a year. Or definitely when she goes to preschool.

I certainly think being home with my parents reduces the tedium of staying at home. I can list all of the good things–the children get oodles of quality time with their grandparents, we aren’t paying for duplications of services like newspapers and cable and telephone. Even gas and electric–one bill, even in a larger house, is smaller that our two bills were previously. And I enjoy the time with them.

While 2009 is going to be Frugality 2009! (if I say it often enough, I’ll stop cruising slickdeals, right?), I do suspect it will be Work More, Sarah, 2009! as well. Do I actively seek more freelance work? Get an office job? Try a class?

So for Christmas, Rob got Guitar Hero World Tour. I think he suggested I would like the music more than I have. Guitar is not my favorite thing and honestly, I am at fault here, expecting Guitar Hero to have more for me. Harp Hero woudl have been more like it.

Rob has been playing The Joker by Steve Miller. A lot. So when we went to get hair cuts on Friday night, he went to the Exclusive Company. He found a Steve Miller CD for $4, which seemed a coup. We got hair cuts and he was telling me about the grab bag. I love grab bags. There is nothing more alluring than whatever crap the store can’t sell wrapped up and sold, sight unseen. What hidden treasure will it be? This seems to be genetic–my mom and Miranda also love grab bags.

Rob told me about the $4 grab bags–10 CDs or DVDs! In a black paper bag! I begged to know what he had gotten. But Rob is not addicted to grab bags and he has better adapted to Frugality 2009! than I have. We decided the grab bag was too cheap to ignore. We returned, bought the first bag, went to the car. I couldn’t even wait until we stopped for coffee.

The first CD was the best 45s of 1960-66. We picked out 203 songs we might have paid $0.69 each for on iTunes. OK, we’re doing OK.

The second CD was the Steve Miller band. The same CD Rob had bought from the Exclsuive Company. For $4.

I couldn’t stop laughing. I am still laughing when I think about it.

CD’s 3-10 featured a Soul II Soul CD that Rob owned on cassette in HS, The Best of the Doobies that we have at home already, some Stevie Wonder covers, Will Smith Wild Wild West era, and some other stuff.

I can’t wait to go back.