...I've come to talk to you again

I have been trying to find an anti-nausea drug that works to make me a functioning mother, and I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that one does not exist.

The closest I've come is with Zofran. I can sometimes get a couple hours of vomit-free activity from Zofran, but it's tricky.

First, if I take it in the morning, I must wait until after I've thrown up. Otherwise I just lose the pill shortly after I take it. So that can translate to an hour or two of early morning waiting-to-barf time.

Second, it costs forty dollars a pill.

Finally, I'm hesitant to dope myself with Zofran day and night, because it's only been on the market for pregnant women for six years, and that fact gives me a creepy thalidomide-type feeling.

My resourceful friend J. researched my alternatives, and came up with the much-revered Unisom/B6 combo. I took it two nights ago, and I'm just waking up now. I took just half of a pill, and I was a listing ship of profanity for the next 36 hours.

If I weren't a mother, and didn't have a Chebbles following me, mimicking my every word ("Holy CRAP I'm sick!" she says, dogging my heels), then a drowsy drug might be an alternative. As it is, anything that further impairs my tiny allotment of energy is a no-go.

My doctor prescribed another, less-drowsy drug, but it's... a... suppository. EW!!! OK, it's better than trying to swallow pills, but not by much. And I'm afraid I will endure all of that trauma, only to discover that I fall asleep for a week, and become a useless mother once again.

And all of these choices aside, it's counterintuitive to take any PILL while pregnant. It doesn't feel right to dope up my body while I'm hosting an apparently living creature who has no choice in the matter. The only reason I'm trying these drugs is so that I can function as a mother.

I'm lucky now that The Chebs is feeling snuggly lately, and she wants to lie down in bed with me and read books for the first hour after she wakes up. Pregnant Mama JACKPOT!

So in the mornings, Hub-D retrieves her from her crib when she wakes up. And around this time, I wake up and hurl, making "ZUL"-esque noises for the enjoyment of the whole household ("Mama coughs in toilet").

Then, in the peaceful (Zofran-laced) time that follows, Chebbles and I convene in the big bed. We "get cozy" under the covers and read "Babybug" magazines, finding every last creature in the pictures together.

Me: "See the hummingbird, Chebbles?" (As it flies around our madrone tree.)

Chebs: "Oh! The hummingbird! It twinkles like a star."

It moves

They weren't sure what to do with me in the doctor's office today.

My pregnancy is "normal" as far as they're concerned, so there was a general, benign "What the heck are YOU doing here?" feeling in the air. To tell the truth, I can't last longer than 8 days without medical verification that I am pregnant. So there I was in the examining room.

The nurse didn't wheel in the ultrasound machine. I started to panic, "Are we, uh, doing an ultrasound?"

"He's going to try to hear the heartbeat with the Doppler," she said.

Then she said, "Shall I get your urine sample, take your blood pressure and weight?"

"No, thanks," I said. Those were the things we did just before we discovered our last baby had died. So that particular ritual is abhorrent to me.

And GOD BLESS HER, she said, "OK, we don't have to," and left the room.

Dr. W. came in and lubed up the Doppler, chatting with me about my choice of beverage. (I can only drink cold unflavored sparkling water.) Then, just before he laid t6he Doppler on my belly, he said, "If we don't hear a heartbeat, we're not going to panic. It's early, but you're thin and so it's worth a shot."

Then for the next year and a half he scanned my abdomen for a heartbeat. He kept finding MY heartbeat, which is reassuring in its own way, but not when you're trying to pick up the tell-tale quick lub-dub that means you may actually have a live baby in your uterus, rather than another "disappointment" (to quote my grandmother).

Time ticked on. We both grew grey and old. No heartbeat via Doppler.

So I said, "We're not going to panic, right?" and he said, "no," while he rolled in my old pal, the ultrasound machine.

And a few moments later, there on the screen, was the elusive HEARTBEAT. Lub-dubbing silently away. Then, for an extra thrill, the baby WIGGLED. It moved its little frog legs and arm nubs and twirled around in his spacious uterine home. I screamed.

I thought quickly, mid-scream, wondering if it were possible that other women were waiting in other rooms, and that the screaming might upset them. But it was just before lunch hour, I was the only patient, so I kept screaming.

"You don't know how long I've been waiting to see that," I said, my eyes growing wet.

He printed out a picture and sent me on my merry way.

Less than two weeks until the big nuchal fold ultrasound. Fingers still tightly crossed.

But you know what? My baby MOVED!

Help!

I am pretty much housebound these days, and in constant search of some form of entertainment. Unfortunately, so many movies and books -- contemporary and classic -- contain bad birth stories, stories of maternal abandonment or pregnancy loss.

You wouldn't believe where bad birth stories crop up. In the Editor's Letter in "Parents" magazine, they suddenly segued to a stillbirth. And as soon as you think it's safe to read the recent masterpieces "The Known World" and "The Thirteenth Tale," you get pelted with more stillbirths!

Folks! Can't there be a rating on media materials for pregnant ladies? There should be a little insignia to indicate that people enduring high-anxiety pregnancies should avoid these particular stories. Perhaps a distended belly with a red circle and slash through it?

So this is my request for you. Can you let me know what movies I should rent and what books I ought to acquire -- that are absolutely devoid of bad birth stories or other forms of mom-related heartbreak?

I ought to mention that "bad things happening to animals" is also verboten. I've never been able to weather "Bambi," "Old Yeller," or even the dog who gets kicked occasionally in "The Inheritance of Loss."

I'm about to start the new Harry Potter book. If anyone has read it already, can you verify for me that no unborn babies or helpless creatures are harmed? I can't trust anything nowadays!

How to feel

Yesterday, Hub-D and I got the news that a dear friend has had another miscarriage.

She had been due in February, and we were looking forward to negotiating our pregnancies together. We both have toddlers and our husbands are very close (he was the best man at our wedding).

But then she started bleeding over the weekend, voluminously, and by yesterday the pregnancy was over. But when we talked yesterday, she was not the blubbering mess I had expected and I was confused by this.

I feel the best course of events, when one suffers a miscarriage, is to dramatically scale through the stages of grief, tearing the tiles from the bathroom walls in your heartbreak and agony. One should hire a team of professionals (support groups, perinatal counselors, RE's and masseuses) to navigate through these perilous straits, and write every feeling that drips from your face straight into a public blog.

But she was choosing to see the... bright side? She was glad that she hadn't given birth to a full-term baby with defects, but rather she had a natural miscarriage (no D&C) and their prospects of another healthy pregnancy are very good.

How can this woman be so rational?

I think I turned into a real buzz-kill after my own second miscarriage. It took me many months of constant therapy and writing in order to feel anything near normal. My sense of humor flew straight out the window.

It was one of the most emotionally devastating moments of my life (greater than or equal to my parent's divorce), and I got quieter. I got more sober. I wasn't as fun anymore. And not everyone wanted to stick around and watch the devastation as it slowly dismantled my formerly upbeat personality.

But I learned so much as a result. I learned to appreciate friends who didn't mind the "new me." I learned to identify those people and hold them close. They're the "keepers."

I would never have known this if I hadn't lost that baby in December. If I hadn't walked through the winter rain for appointments with the grief counselor, I wouldn't have learned how to properly be sad. I also wouldn't appreciate Hub-D NEARLY as much as I do -- that man has stuck by me and helped in every way, granting every request, even ones that involve taking a toddler to Paris.

So now I have a friend suffering her second miscarriage. And I'm looking at her expectantly. Will she totally crumble and have to re-build her life, weeping in playgrounds and secretly naming her deceased child?

But it seems that she's choosing a different road, a baffling path that didn't seem open to me. My miscarrying friend seems insulated from the full impact of the miscarriage, and I'm jealous. Her speech isn't infused with angry swear words and she isn't contemplating a jump from the Golden Gate Bridge. She's already looking forward to trying again.

I feel like I'm in AP Calculus again. I feel like my friend is acing the AP test, just breezing through the answers. But when faced with the same test, I sighed and broke my pencils and growled at the untenable equations.

More from The Chebs

* The Milky Temperature Debate. She gets toddler formula 2-3 times a day. Lately, she's decided that it's "too hot" or "too cold" after one sip. She looks like Meryl Streep in "The Devil Wears Prada," sneering with distaste as she drops a Starbucks back into her assistant's hand.

* My jiggly belly is a source of many laughs for her right now. She likes to give it "foofs." This involves putting one's mouth up to another's belly and blowing hard to make a farting sound. She is frighteningly good at it.

* This morning, she picked up Hub-D's iPod, and held it purposefully against her ear. She then carefully enunciated the name of a local town. Near as we can tell, she was calling information!? What listing was she looking for? I hope she was connected at no additional charge.

* She can now identify three letters: "S," "O," and "A." If we could just start rocking the "P"'s we'd be ready for bathtime. As it is, she protests bathtime because she realizes it is the Gateway to Bedtime. But it's so much fun in there, especially now that I've acquired the Three Men in the Tub, and she gets to play with SOA...P.

* She's really into boobs. She can find 'em on anyone/anything.

* "I don't share." Just so you know. She's not a sharer. You'll have to look elsewhere for your sharing needs.

* And really, what is the point of marching in your neighborhood 4th of July parade if you don't bring Elmo?

How's The Chebs?

While I've been pissing and moaning and getting ultrasounds every five minutes, Chebbles has been busy with her own pursuits. For example, she started preschool.

I had made up my mind NOT to do preschool, but in light of current gestational events, I thought I'd give it a go -- two days a week for three hours. It's embarrassing how much she loves it. When I drop her off, she goes darting into the classroom and I have to lumber after her to pursue her for a goodbye handshake (she's not a hugger). When I showed up to pick her up yesterday, she burst into tears, hollering, "NO, MAMA!"

My mom took this picture (right) of Chebbles on her first day of preschool, obviously plotting how she and Mimi might be able to move into the facility permanently.

She also won't tell me what happens there. She'll give me detailed explanations of events that we've done together, but ask her for the 411 on her mornings at preschool and you're out of luck. "You had to be there, Mama."

Chebbles has also decided to get serious about her art. In the past, we'd scribble together. Now she gets pissed if I even approach her crayons. Unless she needs me to draw a particularly challenging element (e.g., her cousins), she'd like me to back off. She's become very deliberate about her drawings, and she'll get frustrated if something goes awry, or if she's misunderstood as an artist.

When I picked her up from preschool, her teacher handed me a sponge painting she had done. I knelt down with her and I said (as I learned from the parenting books), "Oh, I like the way you used pink for this!"

She got annoyed with me, as I had missed the point of the painting. "It's FIVE, Mama," she said, pointing to the overlapped pink sponge marks down the page. "I did one-two-three-four-five."

O...K...

She also WHOOPED IT UP with Grandma for three weeks. They were thick as thieves throughout Grandma's three week visit. It has been tough on Chebs, having her mother suddenly laid up and miserable. So Grandma administered liberal amounts of strawberry ice cream, to good effect.

Now that Grandma has gone, she's spending time with her pal Z., whose mother routinely retrieves her from Chebbles' House of Barfing and Boredom, and takes the two toddlers on myriad adventures in the Bay Area. Again, there are tears when it's time to come home.

Finally, The Chebs has become very particular about what she'll wear. I've also become too sick to care. I'll remove something from her body if it's got poop on it. Other than that, wear what you want, kid! Winter dresses on a 90 degree day? Knock yourself out. So when she chose her topless Hawaiian ensemble to wear to the park, I didn't intervene. We just strode into the park, saying "Aloha!" to the surprised onlookers.

That's my Chebs!

Do they think we're stupid?

I'm in the midst of watching the whole first season of "Dead Like Me" on DVD.

What's frustrating is that the show COULD be good. It has a very clever premise and the acting is superb. But the continuity is a disaster.

Perhaps a person is not meant to watch the whole first season of the show, back-to-back. If you do, you notice the mind-blowing mistakes.

For example, in the pilot, George's dad is a semi-closeted gay man. Then, by the 8th show in the season, he's straight! No sign of the intriging secret gay life we were promised in the pilot.

And one character, Daisy, is introduced as she rails against George's lack of a "New York Times" subscription. She MUST read it every day! Then, a few shows later, she's poring over a local newspaper instead -- no sign of a NYT to be had.

I wonder in cases like this -- doesn't the actor object? Wouldn't they stand up on the set and say, "Hey, my character only reads the New York Times!"

And one of the WORST insults to our intelligence was the Irish guy. They show a red-headed man doing an Irish jig on a bar -- he has a very strong Irish accent, it's an Irish bar. I believe it's safe to assume the man is Irish.

Then, when it comes time for him to enter heaven, his unique vision of the place is... THE CLIFFS OF DOVER. He gets all misty eyed when he sees it glowing before him, "Ahh, the Cliffs of Dover," he says in his Irish brogue, and jumps straight into them.

I went to Wikipedia to ensure that indeed, the Cliffs of Dover are ENGLISH.

Are Irish actors so hard up for parts that they wouldn't protest this error?

I'm usually willing to overlook small errors for good acting. This is why I put up with "Monk" for so long -- fraught with holes, but Tony Shalhoub!

I am genuinely curious, though, how these consistency errors occur. Can they send me the scripts before shooting, and I'll help? Because these problems jeopardize my suspension of disbelief -- which I am desperate to maintain these days.

Next up, I'm going to try the first season of "Lost." Mistake?

Moratorium

I'm not sure how to establish this, but I would like to declare an absolute moratorium on the telling of stories of pregnancies that do not end in live babies.

Once I'm done having biological children, and have emerged from this state of gestational anxiety, perhaps I'll be up for the tales of babies who died in utero. But NOT NOW.

It may seem superfluous, even unnecessary, to declare such a moratorium, but you may not know what a repository I've seem to become. Everyone keeps popping up with the sad stories of fetal loss, stillbirth and death shortly after birth. What is the compulsion to share these stories with me?

I understand that these are interesting stories. But they fascinate me inordinately and they're just bad for me right now. They keep me awake at 3am, playing over and over again. I can hear the voice of the person telling me the story, with little snippets repeating over and over. It's like the maternity version of Freddy Kreuger.

I've started telling people to stop mid-story. "I can't hear bad pregnancy stories right now," but some folks motor on. Do I need to wear a sign? A T-shirt that says, "Good news only, please!"

Any suggestions? Or AWESOME, live-baby pregnancy stories you can share?

The secret blog

Hello folks. Thank you again for all your well-wishes on our new pregnancy. I'm still so tentative about feeling "happy," but I permit myself a few fantasies here and there throughout the day. Things like, "Gee whiz, what if I actually DO have a baby?" Then I set about dipping bell peppers in Italian dressing and doing the crossword puzzle, neutralizing that dangerous little bit of hope.

I thought it was a good time to come clean with you about my secret blog. When I wasn't prepared to share my news, but I needed to write about the pregnancy, I put it here, in the Straits of Hell.

In case you'd just like a summation of the content of the secret blog, it's basically this:

"Oh damn, I think the baby died!"
"No wait, it's still alive."
"Oh crap, how about now, now it's definitely gone."
"No, hold on a minute, I'm still pregnant."

From now on I will treat everyone to these neuroses, front and center, on this blog. Aren't you lucky!?

News

I can't write long, as I am feeling terrible in the core of my being.

But there is a good reason for it. A very good reason, which is that I'm pregnant.

I've just returned from my 9 week appointment at the OB-GYN, and he has officially declared this pregnancy to be "normal." We are past the point where this baby's sister died last December (8w3d), and way past the pregnancy before that (5w3d), we have a heartbeat, and it's growing steadily.

Of course a million other terrible things can befall a pregnancy. So, like any person whose heart has been broken, I'm only very tentatively feeling the joy of a "normal" pregnancy. The nuchal fold test is in 2 weeks, so that's another hurdle to jump over, but my OB told me to consider my chances for genetic problems to be "remote."

So there you have it, as of today, I am with child. Jesus, can you believe it?

The falcon arrives

What's going on with the peregrine falcon?

A few evenings ago, Hub-D and I sat on the front porch and happened to see a big striped falcon swoop directly above us, and perch in the massive pine across the street. He has been there ever since (the bird, not Hub-D, who has found other things to do with his time).

The bird is calling out throughout the daylight hours. Is he looking for a mate? Staking out territory? Is he just so glad to be here?

It's a cool "keeeer" noise that he makes, and it lends an exotic flair to our neighborhood.

Why is he here? Why has he chosen this semi-permanent perch with a full view of our house?

Theories abound.

Hub-D thinks the falcon has arrived to finally carry away Stanley, our crabby old tabby. The cat has moved in with the next-door neighbors, however, leading Hub-D to execute an elaborate gesture with his arms, directed up at the falcon, "HEY! Stanley is over THERE! THERE!"

My mom thinks that the falcon is after the house finches. Remember the sunflowers that have sprung up all over our garden? They are irresistable to both bees and finches, who hover in and around the garden throughout the daylight hours. The perch the falcon has chosen gives him a terrific view of the birdies in our garden, and he's right within swooping distance, should he need a snack.

(Otto, by the way, has discovered this finch-laden snack bar as well, and has taken out at least two birds -- one was saved in the nick of time by the heroic Hub-D.)

Me? Perhaps it's all the Harry Potter excitement, but the way the falcon perches and chats all day long, "keeering" over our heads, I'm led to believe he has something to say, a message for our family.

Maybe, "Thanks for the birdies, suckas!"

A domain is born

All hail Hub-D, who fixed it so we can all go to www.shakenmama.com instead of the awkward URL of yesteryear. The old one will still work, so you don't have to fix your links to continue to reach this site.

What will we do with the time we're now saving, now that we don't have to spend all day typing "quakeshakenmama.blogspot.com?" I suggest additional naps.

Brilliant!

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing Child Care Overseas

Here I am paying $15/hour for childcare when this perfectly obvious solution was a mailbox away...

On Beauty Pissed me Off

Damn! I really enjoyed Zadie Smith's "White Teeth." It was fantastic. There are characters in that book I will never forget -- the angry Indian waiter, the suicidal old soldier, and the gorgeous young savior.

So what the heck happened with "On Beauty?" Some of the same characters showed up again, playing slightly different roles, and some of the dialogue was so good I read it outloud to Hub-D, who actually cheered!

But all of the characters were kind of blurry. I never got a good handle on anyone's personality -- they seemed to switch up all the time. And when they weren't sleeping together (which they all seemed to do at some juncture of the book), they were annoying me with their inconsistency.

For example, the self-destructive poetry professor is a skinny white lady who never wears make-up. But halfway through the book, she presents a critique of a student's mascara application. I hate those kind of inconsistencies!

Where in the world was Zadie Smith's editor? Can I volunteer for the position?

See, this is one of those books that is almost good, it has such promise, and some bright flaring moments of goodness, then it all just goes to hell.

It presents an excellent juxtaposition between liberal and conservative factions on a New England college campus. Although this has been presented before, Zadie Smith gave the primary conservative characters really GOOD voices. They had good things to say, and contradicted the "PC" establishment beautifully.

I told Hub-D that I was enjoying these debates immensely, precisely because the conservative characters were not being shown as evil characatures (such as cigar-chomping, lily white hunters) but as a functional, loving family with a lot to offer the debate.

He said to me, "I bet you they are disgraced by the end of the book."

PSHAW! I responded. Zadie Smith wouldn't do that to me.

But she did. I didn't expect the characters to be perfect, but without spoiling the book, I'll say that it just AIN'T FAIR what she has them do. It's inconsistent and way too tidy a way to say, "Unlike the secretly evil conservatives, the liberals enjoy true love despite the odds..."

Anyway, I'm annoyed.

Anyone have any good books to recommend? I need more fiction written by men. I always switch -- a book by a man, then a woman, then a man. But I'm running out of man books. I'm thirsty for a well-constructed book with consistent characters who don't keep randomly sleeping together.

Ratting on the Moviegoing Parents

I hate it when other people are judgemental about parenting, which is why I keep trying to cancel my subscription to "Mothering" magazine (and it keeps showing up anyway, month... after month...).

But what's going on with the toddlers at the movie theater?

Yesterday, Hub-D and I went to see "Ratatouille," and it was really terrific! We both enjoyed it fully, which is more than I can say for most movies we've attended together. The graphics were extraordinary, and I got very hooked into the story. Pixar has a fresh sense of humor with all of their movies.

Anyway, it was a 7:35 showing, and there was a 2-year-old sitting near us.

That movie was WAY too scary for toddlers -- so much of it would have freaked Chebbles out, I imagine she would have eventually become catatonic with fear as the rats were chased screaming with cleavers and shotguns.

And what in the world are toddlers doing awake that late? By the time they would get him home and into bed, we're looking at 10pm.

Also, toddlers can't handle a full-feature length film -- by the time we were halfway through the movie, in a quiet romantic scene, that 2-year-old and a few other scattered toddlers in the audience were squawking and squirming and asking to leave.

So have pity on the poor toddlers, yes, but have MORE pity on the poor parents, like us, who managed to get a sitter (hooray Grandma!) for the evening, only to have their evening moviegoing activity interrupted 17 times by an active toddler.

I can hear how judgmental this sounds, but this is an old issue for me -- I've seen parents dragging their little kids to 9pm showings of truly terrifying movies, and I never get used to it. I just think it sucks for the kids, ultimately. They will have manage a sleep deficit coupled with the nightmares that these movies are sure to evoke.

I would argue that if you can't get a sitter and can't shelter your child from these kind of images (and fellow-movie-goers from your child's sweet but loud questions throughout the film), wait until the movie comes out on video and watch it after he's tucked into bed.

Anyway, it was a great movie.

419 Scams

I read a book review of "Shiver Metimbers"' collected letters, and it has rekindled my fascination with 419 scams. I can't decide how I feel about the scammers and the people who "bait" their scams -- but I must confess that I find these conversations hilarious.


419 scams are "advance fee frauds," whereas the number 419 comes from the Nigerian Criminal Code prohibiting obtaining property by false pretenses. Although it's a very old con, it became exceedingly popular with the advent of e-mail, and the majority of the scams originate in Nigeria.

I think we've all received the spams from these people, saying that they have a lot of money, they need our help to get it out of the bank. They also pretend to be charities, and they need a kind-hearted individual to help them distribute their much-needed funds. The scammers also commonly pretend to be women in love with the e-mail recipient.

Another method of the scam (new to me) is they Fedex checks to people who have things for sale (cars, apartments, etc.), but the check is for MORE than the sale price. They then ask the recipient to send them a check for the difference -- only to have their original check bounce after a two-week delay.

The bottom line is that it's criminal behavior, and many people are hurt by it around the world. Older people, nice people, poor people, they all get taken in by these scams, and they borrow money in order to help out a "princess in trouble" or to help a "family in a refugee camp," only to discover that they've been had.

At least one American man has been kidnapped then brutally murdered as a result of a 419 scam, after he traveled to Nigeria to unwittingly pursue a scam. But there are smaller victims every day, people who lose their life savings because they think they are helping orphans or that they stand to make a profit from a rich prince's inheritance.

At least one woman was led to believe she was adopting some Nigerian orphans, and used every cent of her savings to "help" these fictitious children to leave the country. In my current state of reproductive woes, THAT seems like the worst crime of all.

SO, what the "scam baiters" do is PRETEND to fall victim to the 419 scammers' stories, and they string these people along for months on end, getting them to send silly pictures, videos, documents -- and basically waste the time they might spend on real victims. The scam baiters have pretty wicked senses of humor, and I can't help but laugh at the situations and people they invent. (e.g., David Hyde Pierce as an alcholic clown?)

I have to admit I enjoy watching the scammers squirm and humiliate themselves on websites such as 419 Eater, but part of me feels weirdly sympathetic with the criminals... why do I feel sorry for these terrible people? I did feel sorry for gypsy pickpocket children in the Athens bus station... but these savvy, successful criminals should not merit a whit of regard from me, should they?

Legend Alert!

I just got off the phone with the police. I called them because I received this e-mail this morning:

Hi there,

My sister has a friend that almost had her baby abducted at Osage Park last week. She said an older white male popped out of the bushes and picked up her 1 1/2 year old daughter. Another Mom noticed and started yelling at him. He came back an hour later with a wagon and attempted to try again to the same little girl. The Mom started screaming and he ran off with the wagon to the parking lot where there was another man waiting in a car and both drove off. They called the police and sure enough identified him as a sex offender. The Mom said, the parks are so packed and those that have many entries and lots of bushes to be careful with your children or other children that tend to run off.

Thought I'd share this info because our children need to be safe at all times! Please share this with other Moms.

Does anyone else find that, now that we're parents, we're beseiged with a new set of urban legends? This doozy arrived in my mailbox this morning.

I guess I'd assumed we were all too savvy to fall for these things anymore.

When I first arrived at college, I was told the typical urban legend stories, and of course I believed them all! They're terrific stories, presented as truths, that are handed down from class to class, amazing a whole new group of freshmen.

The best one was the famous "ether roommate rape" legend, which had been twisted and embellished to include a broken leg and a lawsuit. One by one, I came to realize, or was informed by a more knowledgable classmate, that these tales were not true.

Now, fifteen years later, I'm finding there is a new set of urban legends afloat. In particular, it seems that moms like to pounce on the notion that THEIR child is going to be KIDNAPPED.

Yes! People DO get kidnapped, and it is a true horror in our society. I've seen "Law & Order," I know that bad things happen. But I also know that stranger abductions are (thankfully) really, really rare.

When I was little, I had a friend's mom who was particularly gullible to these stories, and she would warn us against the most obtuse dangers. She was pretty sure that whereever her daughter and I went together, we were in imminent danger of being kidnapped as sex slaves or unwittingly turned into drug fiends.

For example, H.'s mom told us when we went to a movie that we shouldn't sit near ANY men, and if any man came and sat close to us, we should MOVE. Why? Because men have been sitting next to innocent young girls in movie theaters and injecting them with HEROIN! We would become addicted to the drug, and enslaved by this man who could supply it to us.

She was also pretty sure that these men would plant needles in the change returns of pay phones, or give us acid and tell us it was candy. All in the pursuit of kidnapping one or both of us.

(I should add that H. and I were pretty homely and obnoxious 11-year-olds at the time. I really can't see what the appeal would have been.)

So this morning, I received the above e-mail from our local mom's group about an attempted child abduction.

Here is what makes it obvious:

* "My sister has a friend." Who?

* Has anyone ever tried to pick up an 18-month-old child who didn't know them? How did that child react? This story would have worked much better with a newborn.

* The people are depicted as morons. Wouldn't the mom have called the police after the guy's first attempt? And once he was thwarted, wouldn't a clever sex offender have focused on another kid? After all, the park is so "packed" with them.

* The expression "Sure enough." I'm not sure why, but that term, when inserted in one of these stories, is a big tip-off that the whole story is a lie.

* The general overriding fear. The parks are so "packed" that it's easy to let your child out of your sight, whereupon that child will most likely be abducted by a sex offender and his accomplice in broad daylight. Why, because there are BUSHES.

So I called the Danville police, and before I got the question out of my mouth, the officer said, "Is this about the alleged abduction in Osage Park? It's an erroneous e-mail and completely untrue."

Well, duh. I sent a message with this info back to the people who sent it to me. Do you think it will stop there? Nah. I betcha five bucks it pops up with someone else's regional park on it within a week.

Oh, and did I ever tell you what happened to my sister's friend's roommate in college!???

Irrational exuberance

I don't want to terrify you, but something insane is going on in our garden.

Remember my glee when I discovered that our garden had started to grow and flourish? It felt like an analogy for my life since the beginning of our miscarriage disasters: My live has been filled with unexpected blessings and an influx of warm and nurturing people in our lives.

Well, I didn't mention at the time that I had had something of a fertilizer snafu. I didn't know what the heck I was doing, I didn't know that people "mix" a "few cups" of fertilizer in their soil before planting. Instead, after all of the seeds were laid in the ground, I just chucked a whole bag of organic fertilizer on top of the soil.

As I went to throw the bag away, I scanned the instructions for the first time. "Oohhhhhh, I was supposed to 'mix' it?" So after I put Chebbles to bed that night, I went outside and scooped as much of the excess fertilizer from the surface of the garden as possible.

But still, one is led to believe by the absurd fertility of our garden... it was too much.

It's a jungle out there, reminiscent of the heretofore mentioned African garden in Barbara Kingsolver's "Poisonwood Bible." The corn IS as high as an elephant's eye. The beans scare me with their voluptuous, long bodies. The tomatoes and the squash plants are in an all-out brawl. I can almost hear them shouting at each other as I lie in bed at night, "Move OVER will you?" "I can't, your giant pumpkin is in my FACE."

We have also scores of dark red sunflowers, volunteers from last season's bounty. They have now surpassed ten feet, with massive flowers as big as your face.

These sunflowers are all the more disconcerting because they are now peering directly into our bathroom window. It is nice to see a lovely, Van-Gogh-esque blossom soaring into the morning sky... but sometimes one just wants to be alone.

Yesterday, Hub-D watered the garden, and it really seemed to like his method, Hub-D's special touch, I guess. In the space of a few hours, one sunflower stalk grew at least half-a-foot. He and I both witnessed this miracle.

And last night, I had a nightmare that the entire base of the garden was filled with MORE massive green beans, so fat it looked like they might burst.

I shared this dream with my mother as we strolled out to make our now-daily harvest, and we gasped when we realized it was TRUE. Somehow, overnight, the garden had grown a hundred giant, leggy Blue Lake beans, even though we'd picked them all just two days ago.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for this harvest. It's gratifying to see babies sucking on fresh beans as they stroll around the house, knowing they're organic and directly from our garden, all from a $2 seed packet. But I'm starting to wonder when it will stop. And whether these vegetables are radioactive.

All I know is that we're going to have pumpkins in a few months. I don't mean a few fun pumpkins to carve and park on the porch. I mean, the only solution will be to open a bona fide Pumpkin Patch for the neighborhood, and require that every child take as many as he/she can carry, and will fit in his/her stroller.

My mom and I plucked and fried a whole bunch of squash blossoms in order to reduce the ridiculous harvest (they were good!), but of course, the next day, dozens of blossoms had taken their place.

I give up.

Hurry, tell me about good books!

Have you ever come across a really good book, and once you finished reading it, you became insatiable for OTHER BOOKS, trying to re-create that amazing feeling?

I'm in one of those frenzies right now, reading faster than I usually do, book after book after book.

I'm not sure now which book set me off. It might have been "The Thirteenth Tale" by Diane Setterfield, which I found in mid-May. (Reminder: NOT good reading for pregnant people). That led me to "Shadow of the Wind" (coincidentally, also not good for preggers), which then led me into this book-reading mania.

Not that I have experience with nymphomania, but I wonder if this is how it feels. When I'm in the midst of a good book, I'm fine, but as I near the end of that book and before I begin another good book, I start to panic and life feels dangerously hollow.

Right now I'm midway through "The Known World" by Edward P. Jones, having finished "Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" by Mark Haddon, "Never Let Me Go" by Kazuo Ichiguro, "The Observations" by Jane Harris, and "Flower Children" by Maxine Swann.

I'm on a roll! Every one of these books has been terrific.

And I fancy myself a little picky on this subject. I get really irritated by books that are written without a pre-formed structure. Whoever told writing students to allow their characters to "guide the story" was full of crap, and I should sue that person for all of the time and money I've expended on stories with no discernible structure. That hippie crap was the style taught by several of my teachers at Emerson, and it gets on my nerves. So luckily, the books I've chosen so far have been beautiful exceptions to that ever-popular, lazy writing technique.

The one "roadblock" I came across was Cynthia Ozick's "The Puttermesser Papers," which was a scattered, self-indulgent work that I finally had to skim and toss, but not before reading the brutal ending which just pissed me off even more. (I really enjoyed her work, "Heir to the Glimmering World," so perhaps I just picked the wrong follow-up.)

But with "The Known World," I'm back in the saddle. I'm only haunted by the terror of finishing this book without another excellent one in the wings. I found the newish Amy Tan book, "Saving Fish From Drowning" and "Running With Scissors: A Memoir" by Augusten Burroughs.

My fear is that one bad book will ruin this reading frenzy. All it would take is one clunker to knock it down. When I was weighed down with "The Puttermesser Papers," I was terrified that it would mean the end of my book-induced ecstasy. Luckily, the plantation world of Virginia in the 1840's has saved me... for the time being.

So please help me... what books should I track down, and any clunkers to avoid?