I luv UV So this morning we went to the UV treatment room for the first time. Usually before we do something new to him (such as stick him with needles, ply him with bitter herbs, or enroll him in preschool) we discuss matters with Baldo. We provide an anticipatory set. We talk things over for at least a week. But today, owing to the schedule, we went with little fanfare to the office.

Thus he was still chattering about the utility truck in the parking lot--about its outriggers, about its bucket, about its two blue rotary beacons--when the dermatologist's nurse opened the door to the ultraviolent chamber and handed us a pair of goggles.

And he lost his shit.

I'm not going in there. I don't like that place. That is very bad. We all looked at each other.

"Marrit will hold me," he proclaimed.

The nurse gave me the once-over.

"Marrit will hold me," he pleaded.

"You're too white for that," the nurse said. "And you don't have enough clothes on." Yeah, yeah. Story of my life. My people are uninhibited and Arctic.

So in went J., holding the naked, goggled Baldo in his arms. I had to cover my eyes and look away. I was pretty certain that when I turned back around, they'd have merged into one being with a single cellular structure, like the Brundlefly. I don't even want to think of the ramifications of combining my husband and son into one organism. Like, I'm pretty sure we'd have to make some adjustments to the marriage.

Fortunately that did not happen, and we were able to move on to the acupuncturist. Seven sticks, and we didn't even need Pez. Excelsior!

confidential to Katie Holmes Whatever you do, don't mate with that little twerp. May I recommend the Mirena?

I met him in a swamp on Dagoba As your growing child inevitably becomes obsessed with Star Wars, you must resist the temptation to LimeWire Weird Al Yankovic's "Yoda" and load it onto your Lyra. It might seem funny at first, but then you will be expected to play the song everywhere. And sing it at bedtime. You capitulate in the interest of sleep and surprise yourself: You actually know the words! The song will play in a constant loop in your mind. You could be pulling puppies from a burning building, but you will be singing to yourself: Now I've been around but I've never seen / a guy who looks like a Muppet but he's little and green / oh, my Yoooo-da!

hell. yeah.

my oh my I hate those fancy lads Yet another sign our child is probably not destined for a life of danger and high adventure: He is reduced to frantic tears when the soft top of Jacques Tati's convertible collapses during Monsieur Hulot's Holiday.

sleep delays my life I have an announcement to make:

I put Baldo to bed last night at 6:30 (long, napless day) and then we both slept for twelve hours.

It's the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of my life. Hands down.

little hank bukowski The doctor at Children's told us we could give Zyrtec and Atarax simultaneously, so yesterday afternoon I mixed an Itchy Kid Cocktail of potent antihistamines and shot it to Baldo with an oral syringe. Maximum recommended dosage.

It's horrible to say, but drunken three-year-olds are funny as hell.

He lumbered back and forth down the hall, trailing the feet of his size 5 jammies, belting out the "Bob the Builder" song malapropistically.

"Scoop, Duck, and....Miffy...and Wendy toooo...Lofty and Blendy...join the creeeeewwwww....BOB! the Builder! Can we fix it? Yes, we can't!"

"Time for bed, you," I said. We went back and I broke out the topicals: Aquaphor and the Beeswax-Based Herbal Juju from the Kiddie Acupuncturist. Instead of fighting and kicking, Baldo laid there and took it. Then he turned to me with a serious expression.

"How can you run," he asked, "without any feet?"

Fuck you, George Lucas This has been a long time coming.

I think your movies are overrated shit. Of course I like Empire--everybody does. But you? You're a hypocritical dirtbag. Here's why.

You break your nuts telling everyone that your Episode III or what have you is not for kids. Fair enough. I respect the artist's prerogative, and if you wanted to set the whole thing in a bondage dungeon on Tatooine, that's fine with me. Not everything in the world can and should be safe for children.

But you can't have it both ways. You can't cross-merchandise your stupid "not for kids" movie on every single goddamn box of cereal in the aisle. If your movies are not for children, then don't license toys for them. Does Takashi Miike make action figures for kids? No. He does not. At least not as far as I know. Maybe he makes action figures for sick hentai fucks, and that's fine by me too as long as they aren't fucking everywhere in my face when I go to get yogurt pretzels. I know I like to expend a little effort when I'm searching for unwholesome adult products and services. It adds to the experience.

I'd love to spend my every dollar at the earthy crunchy co-op, where nothing is synergistically marketed. But we have the combined earning power of a public-school teacher and a freelance writer. So we get fuckloads of high-fructose corn syrup and your violent, mediocre crap. And then we take it to a playdate where two boys under six are bashing each other with "light sabers"--flashlights--and then my kid has nightmares for the rest of the week and masters the fine art of hitting other people (including me) with objects. I'm not saying he wouldn't have figured that out eventually, but I'd like to personally thank you for getting me hit in the face this morning with a pair of Vic Firth 22-decibel sound reduction headphones.

Thank you for making the grocery and general stores of America a more violent and stupid place to be. You're a greedy shithead. You make it impossible for parents to be responsible. I'd love to keep my kid away from your movies--he's not ready for them--but you're not letting me. You're just another scumbag in the marketplace. You're the cinematic equivalent of Sparkling Funsation Yogurt 4 Kidz or some shit. You sicken me. You should be defecated upon by a large ruminant animal. Thanks to you we'll probably never be able to leave the house again.

hit by a train Here's the coolest thing ever, or at least since David Sadof read my blog.

Baldo dictated a letter to me to send to the Old 97's. It read:

I love you.

I like your "bird on a telephone wire" and "park" songs.

And today we got a reply from Ken Bethea:

We love you too :-)

My son (just turned 5) loves 4-leaf clover, timebomb and of course, coahuila.

keep up the rock,
ken

the dark side of eBay So I'm putting together our alphabet giraffe puzzle, and Baldo disappears down the hall. Minutes pass. I go look for him. Of course he's sitting at my computer browsing eBay. Looking at Pez dispensers, which he collects. How does he do these things?

I'm a liar I flat-out lied to my kid yesterday. In the past I have exaggerated, perhaps. But you know, maybe broccoli will help you grow up to play drums like Alex Van Halen. The calcium can't hurt. You don't want to break your ulna on the lead-off to "Jamie's Cryin'."

But here was Larry "Cowboy Curtis" Fishburne holding an assault rifle on the poster for Assault on Precinct 13 outside of Vulcan.

"What's that?" Baldo pointed.

J. and I looked at each other. The shitty thing about being The Mom is that there's nobody to whom you can pass the buck. Somebody gets stung by a jellyfish? You better have the meat tenderizer. Somebody has a spiritual crisis? You better be right there with a copy of the Upanishads. Somebody gets curious about semi-automatic weapons? You better be right there with your personal credo.

"That's Larry Fishburne," I said. "He's an actor."

"No, what's he holding?" Even the three-year-old can affect a tone of excoriating exasperation with adult stupidity.

Pause.

"Hmmm. I think he's going to water the yard with that." Water the yard? What, spray the yard with bullets? That was really all I could come up with. I ushered him into the car. I met the eyes of a hipsterish young lady smoking a cigarette and smirking on the sidewalk, and I almost said it: Don't hate. The fuck would you say? Don't think it won't happen to you.

The kid is getting hip to ugly adult stuff.

"Who's that black guy?" he asked J. at the grocery store.

J. gasped. We didn't teach him to gawp at people of various ethnic heritages somehow, did we? Turns out it was Darth Vader.

"I like that black guy!" he yelled to me as they came through the door.

I was dumbstruck for a minute.

"He means Darth Vader!" J. yelled.

"He's a robot and a guy," Baldo explained.

I guess that's true. And now of course we have to explain that he's evil. Like it's not enough that the kid says, "I love George Bush! He is very nice!" (Dad, did you teach him that?)

And for the love of Charles Nelson Reilly, do not read The Butter Battle Book. I guess I forgot it's about the arms race.

All Better Now! Good news, everyone! The Times has officially declared a state of "issue fatigue" on motherhood. Now we will graciously step off stage and wait for our inevitable resurgence in...what...six years? (What's the timetable for cultural resurgence these days? I hear it's speeding up, due to increasing rates of nostalgia and irony.) Look, here come the presenters in evening gowns to escort us down the steps to the press pen, where the tsunami victims and professional athletes on steroids are waiting. Hey, look! It's Mena Suvari!

more good news! The other upside to having a rashy child in pajamas and Vic Firth noise-reduction headphones is that nobody notices that you've had an unfortunate run-in with self-tanner. They're too busy pulling their six-year-olds away from your kid.

Note to self: Stay white.

the redwoods and the oak trees and the double yellow lines I think I spoke too soon. I do that sometimes.

The good news is that our roof is repaired. The bad news is that the roofers swept a whole bunch of oak pollen onto the yard, and Baldo jumped into it. And as a result, we have moved on from Seven Herbs Natural Beverage to some kind of murky bitter herb concoction that I put in orange juice. It looks like somebody's runny poop. Evidently it also causes runny poop. I wouldn't know because my kid's not drinking it.

Is it too early to teach the kid to hold his nose and pound it? It's not really a sipping drink.

I'm gonna plotz, part deux I'm reluctant to commit this to print, but...something is working. It's a Mother's Day miracle. Baldo woke up and was strangely unblemished and supple, save for his legs and feet, which were better but still looked a little like chiggers got into his pants or something.

J. and I kept goggling at him.

"He's a real live boy, Gepetto!" I cried.

Is it the cicada slough? Possibly. Is it the Aquaphor, which I broke down and applied even though it has lanolin (we've got sensitivities to lanolin on both sides of the family)? Is it the Locoid, which we resumed using despite limited success with it previously? I don't know. I don't really care. If it keeps us off Prednisone 4 Kidz! I will wrap the kid in raw pork chops and tie bells to his feet.

So now we will continue carpet-bombing the eczema with all the tools currently at our disposal, and when we have achieved and sustained a certain degree of epidermal clarity, I will remove items from our regimen one at a time. Until then, we will have a two-pronged attack from the east and the west. It's DMX meets Jet Li! It's Faye Wong singing the Cranberries! Okay, now I'm slappy and I really need to get back to work.

a wolf at the door The garage doors are fixed. Big sigh.

Now there'll be no more Weird Dog Incidents. I hope. Today's visitor was a fat squatty miniature poodle who was deaf as a lamp and had to be carried out of the house. He expressed great surprise when lifted by J. and hauled away from Baldokitty's food.

So then J. hefted him back to the driveway, and the poodle scrambled off and perched in the street like a fat squatty miniature speedbump, awaiting his doom. J. tried to pick him up again--since the dog was entirely deaf and unresponsive--and he was caught in the act by our new neighbors, one of whom rent her garments and cried to the other, "Quick, don't let that man grab Sparky!" Fucking hilarious.

I'm gonna plotz Holy granola.

Up. Down. Wiggle. Roar. Oh, that pediatric acupuncture. Either my kid's skin is as thick as composition shingles (which the acupuncturist suggested might be the case) or he's as much a drama queen as his mother. Whichever, he's still complaining about the three quick putatively painless sticks he got yesterday. Was that only yesterday? Sheesh.

He maintains that we "will not go back." Does acupuncture work if the patient is clinging to his mother's leg, crying at full volume? Just curious.

Have I mentioned how much I love the pharmacy techs at my neighborhood CVS? "Hi, Marrit," they greet me, and then load up a bag with our medicines from the "I" bin. "Anything for you today?"

"I don't think so," I said.
"And one for J?"
"Which one is that?"
She holds up the label: PAROXETINE.
"Yeah, it's all related."

Today's newest addition is a little something we might as well call Prednisone 4 Kidz! Let's make it Cherry Flavored with Fun Bursts of Synthetic Hormones!
"It might keep him awake," the pharmacist advised, right before some bitch busted in on our consultation because she had to catch a flight to Santa Fe.
Good to know.

The Prednisome 4 Kidz! will hang out in the cabinet for a little while as we attempt to unblock Baldo's qi. Should the qi fail to unblock or suchlike, I will release the dragon of Western medicine. If any of the four or five people who read this blog have a philosophical problem with the dragon of Western medicine, I recommend that you come over to the house sometime and help me administer the current alternative: The Fucking Expensive as All Hell Powdered Tea Made with Bugs. You should see the dog-and-pony show I put on to get this stuff into my kid.

"There goes a trailer truck! You know what else starts with 'T'? Our tea! Let's have some!"

And it actually tastes pretty good. Even Baldo says so.

Now here's the part where I put it in fifth:

Indulge me for a moment while I misplace my sense of perspective and am not thankful that my child isn't more seriously ill. Were I were surrounded by seriously ill children, I would have no difficulty keeping my sense of perspective. Instead I've somehow become surrounded by Shiny Happy Children, or children who at least appear to be shiny and happy. I am, for example, determined that my kid should continue to attend preschool. And so when I bring him in, here are all these Shiny Happy Children zooming about, pretending to be The Incredibles, swarming around me (no kidding--they really do this) and telling me how their bedroom is pink and they watched Bob the Builder yesterday with their daddy. They seem to like me; I can't imagine why because I'm not pleasant to be around. They want me to read them books.

I don't want to read books to other people's children. I don't want to hold conversations with other people's children. I don't want to share my snacks. I don't want to push other people's children on the swing. Other people's children annoy me because they are so Shiny and Happy, unless they fall down or get rotavirus or something, and in that case I'm happy to hang out with them. I only like Miserable Children.

I'm not doing well with the Zen-like stoicism that parents of special-needs children are supposed to have. I see families with children in cute little shortalls, and I want to physically attack these people. Why are they entitled to be free of discomfort? Let me hurt them a little.

I was driving from one pharmacy to another this week when there was some stupid fakakta radio ad about--what else?--stupid crap to get your woman for Mother's Day. And the script went something like this:
(Shiny and Happy Baby babbles)
Man: "I just wanted to say thank you, honey. You're so good at this."
Woman: "Well, it's the best job there is!"

Fucking barf. If our culture gave half a shit about the well-being of mothers, Mother's Day would not be celebrated with corsages and brunch. No. Mothers would be granted legal immunity to run around wilding like soccer hooligans on Mother's Day. We'd have water balloon catapults and beer bongs. We'd go buck wild. I'd pour a 40 on the curb for all my fallen homies, and we'd all freak nasty till the break of dawn. We will take all the drinkable yogurt and the graham crackers and keep them for ourselves. We'd abuse the Children's Benadryl.

please help Because we have a nap today, I am Googling like crazy.

I am not an ethical eater, but it seems wrong somehow to harvest emus for their (reportedly anti-inflammatory) oil, which is apparently expressed from a fat pad in their back. "Emus died for you, son!" Discuss.

Shit. If it's good enough for the Shriner's Hospital, it might be good enough for me.

Somehow I surfed onto the Baby Name Voyager, and all I have to say is that if you're a white person with a child named Dakota, Lakota, Cheyenne, or some other variant thereof, you deserve to be cudgeled briskly by the descendants of that particular tribe. If you're going to name your child for a mass of people, at least pick a name from your own freakin' heritage. (It's bad enough that there are Dodge Dakotas driving all over the North American pavement.) I think our child would, by that method, be named Frisian or Jute or maybe Geat. Now, isn't that silly?

the good, the bad, and the itchy Confidential to Jennifer Wilbanks: Run. Run far away and stay gone. You don't want this.

Yesterday we kicked so much ass--including discovering an injured baby bird and taking it to Wildlife Rescue--that we rewarded ourselves by window shopping at Guitar Center. Mine is the child who runs away and hides under a picnic table covering his ears when a certain other little boy yells too much at the playground, but he can clamber up on a stool and bash a 16" China cymbal to no apparent ill effect. A little bit from his father, a little bit from his mother.

One of the drum-room salespeople said, "Man, I wish I could run around in my pajamas all day."
"Do you have eczema all over your body?" I asked.
"Nope," he admitted. "I bet you have to put stuff on him for that, too."
"Yep," I said.

Later I asked Baldo, "What was your favorite thing in the store?"
"The Flying V!" he yelled.
"I liked the purple glitter-paint hollow-body Ibanez six-string," I said. What can I say? I'm kind of a femme after all.
"I liked that, too."

How is it possible to love somebody so much and still want to run screaming from them? I don't know.

So today Baldo went to school wearing his truck pajamas with sandals over the footies and headphones on his ears. I'm used to him looking that way, but the other parents aren't, so of course they remark about his "great outfit" and all that. I don't really know what to say. It is a great outfit, but I don't know what our other options are. Tulle is definitely out.

A friend of mine told me recently that she once dated a guy who, in his childhood, was a "bubble boy" due to his allergies and eczema. So I guess that makes me two degrees away from an actual bubble boy. Apparently people can spend their early childhoods in bubbles and turn out to be indistinguishable from the general population. I really don't mean to be flippant about immunological syndromes, but sometimes all you can do is pump them for comic mileage.

I kind of think Baldo has Fifth Disease at the moment. I think there's a rash on the rash. But then again I thought I had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever once. At any rate he wouldn't be contagious anymore. Just rashy. Who knew?

slow, steady Acupuncture appointment? Check.
Bribe for kid? Check.
I'm learning an awful lot about residential garage doors.
There are things to be happy about. For example, I gather from her billing that Paris Hilton is going to die in House of Wax, which I am reviewing tonight. So at least there'll be one good part.

Since I got old and schlumpy and maternal, my skin hasn't been the same, but this morning I did manage a cataclysmic zit pop. Oh, don't pretend you don't do it, too.

We got the new New Order album in the mail as a present.

See? There you go.

rock bottom Sometimes I feel as if I'm trying to save him from drowning, and the more he flails, the more he pushes me under.

I really don't think we're like other families, though I suppose they have their problems, too.

"Did he get into some poison ivy?" asked the Well-Meaning Dad at Ruta Maya.

"No," I said. "It's eczema. It's always like this."

Aside from those questions, people don't really talk to us when we go out.

So the new doctor is recommending UV therapy in the office twice a week. The billing person is apparently in talks with our new HMO. I haven't heard anything back. It might be just as well. We've reached the point of discussing oral Prednisone and cyclosporin because nothing else is working, not even the antibiotic.

We're also going to find an acupuncturist. He'll probably resist, but he resists everything. Getting dressed. Eating. I put supper on the table tonight, and B. didn't want to stop playing with his machines, so I warned him and counted down, and when I went to pick him up, he slapped me in the face so hard my glasses flew across the room.

Fine. Don't eat. Go to bed.

I published an essay a while back about how motherhood doesn't have to reduce you to a robotic state. Since I never got paid for it, I figure I'm at liberty to take back everything I said. I could have an oral syringe for one hand and a Handi-Wipe for another. I get screamed at and beaten up all day.

I should consider myself fortunate that my kid's special needs aren't developmental, that they probably won't be lifelong, that eventually he'll be able to live independently from me. But I'm sick of this shit. I don't know how anybody manages it. I think we're probably all on the verge of self-harm. I don't think any one of us manages it very well.