Oh great.  My children are currently arguing--nay, screaming--about whether or not to put the tractors in the box ("Their home!!" cries Alex) or in the pocket of a tote-box ("Tractors in the pocket!" whines Ian).  There really ought to be a way to broker a treaty here, but signs point to no.  This ancient struggle may continue for ... well... days at least. 

And OH YEAH, I just mailed off my payment for my first DOULA WORKSHOP!!!  Yay ME!  And yay MOM (yes, she's still annoying, but sometime's she's benign).  She will be coming to town to watch rugrats while I'm at this 2-day all-day workshop.  Rawk. 

Anyway, on to the food, eh?

This Week's Eats

• Lemon-Ricotta Pancakes
• Sweet-n-sour seitan (I've heard tell this is good, hehe)
  
• Tempeh Patties
• Palak Paneer
• Pumpkin Quiche
• B-B-Q: this has been pre-empted by rain, but since the dry-rub is already on the ribs (the first meat I've cooked in months), I'm gonna hafta go with the oven on this one.  Ah well, maybe next week.

And now, for The Week In Review (I swear, I always hear the McNeal-Leher News Hour music in my head here)

• Mu Shu Tofu: worth making just so I can keep saying "Mu Shu Tofu", but in fact, good on its own merits.  I think that baking tofu that has been frozen doesn't work as well, though--it comes out weird & spongy. 
  
• Lemon Tagliatelle: Oh. My. Gods.  Please, everyone, make this.  Really. 
  
• Sechuan Green Beans:  don't make this with previously frozen GBs.  It's edible, but you just cannot get that yummy half-cooked, half-uncooked, half-practically burned effect with frozen.  (Yes, I realize that 3-halves = too many halves, cope.)
• Falafel:  It worked! It worked!  Yaaaay!  Okay, so it was Fantastic Foods falafel mix--who cares?  IT WORKED!

And believe me, today I'm looking everywhere for it.  My happiness for today comes from finally finding the User Friendly comic strip syndicated feed and getting it on my Friends page.  You can tell that User Friendly is a good comic because Illiad (the author) really kinda sucks at drawing.  That means that it has to be the content that carries it!  And it's great--it totally suits my latent techno-geek life.  Right now it's in a story arch, so if you want to read them I'd suggest going back 5 or 6 to see what's going on.  Short form:  Pitr the programmer, intent on taking over the world again, has taken his year+ paid leave from his regular job at Columbia Internet ("You can't have a whole year of leave built up!  But the computer does say you do..." "Da, computer say so, must be so.") and has "arranged" a job at Google, that being one of the most efficient means of pushing his plans forward.  Good stuff.

My life sucked all over the place last night.  Both kids are sick, and sick in different ways--one is feverish with a terrible cough, and one is stuffed up beyond belief.  So one of them would wake up whiny and miserable, crying, which of course wouldn't even change B's breathing pattern.  I'd get up, deal with child A, then child B would kick in.  Deal with child B, lay down, B starts snoring.  Time passes.  B stops snoring, child A wakes up crying, begin again.  This happened FOUR TIMES between 10:30pm and 1am.  It was like there was some sort of evil choreographer sitting on our roof pulling marionette strings on my family to exact misery.  I finally fled to the first floor to try and sleep on the futon, which meant that I was away from the snoring, but I had to go up & down the stairs every time child A or B would wake up.  ARGH!  I probably could've kicked B to the futon so that I'd've been on the same floor as the kids, but he can't sleep on the futon and this would've just resulted in both of us being sleep deprived rather than just one of us, and he had an important meeting to attend this morning (wonder how that went?).  Also, since the kids have two different sicknesses, I have TWICE the chance of getting sick, and a non-trivial chance of getting BOTH kinds of sickness!  Ain't life grand?

Since both kids are sick, I did not go to my friend/clients house this morning to drop of the birthing ball and chat.  It is not a good idea for the doula to make her client sick during the 36th week of pregnancy, when labor seems imminent.  She, too, is beginning to descend into prodormal labor.  Drat.  This one is most likely because her baby is still posterior.  She's very frustrated, which is understandable, but she knows that her body is just trying to move the baby into a good position.  If she forces herself into labor now (using some kind of induction technique or anything), she'll just be in for posterior labor hell, and an incredibly high chance of having a c-section (only about 7% of posterior babies are successfully born vaginally in hospitals; funny, homebirths have almost no c/s's for posterior babies.  Odd, eh? *snort*).  I gave her some exercises to try and help her baby move around, as well as the wine-bath-wine-bed suggestion for getting the contrax to stop and get some sleep.

R.

I have now officially attended my first birth as a labor assistant.  My friend KH had her baby yesterday after 6 days of prodromal labor.  It turns out that the baby's hand was up on top of her head, and that is what had been holding up labor.  The midwife was able to move the arm out of the way while her water broke, and from there labor picked up very quickly.  From 6cm to birth was a little over 1 hour.  KH did just beautifully.  She tolerated days and days of difficult prodromal labor--labor which never really goes away but also never really progresses.  Looking back on it, my job was primarily to just hang out with her (something I'm happy to do anyway), try to help keep her spirits up and, to what extent possible, take her mind off of things.  Since I was there, her husband was able to get a few naps in and do some needful things around the house.  When her labor kicked in in full, her husband was right there with her, doing everything she needed--it was really amazing to watch.  I think I learned a lot by watching him.  I feel very honored to have been a part of it.  The baby is beautiful and doing well.  KH is also beautiful, and is doing better.  She hemorrhaged a few hours after the birth, and things were touch n go for a bit whether or not she'd have to go to the hospital, but her bleeding came under control and, with some cytotec to induce additional contractions, started clamping the uterus down appropriately to stop the bleeding.  Now the baby's nursing seems to be keeping the afterpains going well, and the uterus is contracting nicely.  Good midwives are a blessing (and, I might add, NOT FELONS!).


In other news, when I got up this morning it was ABSOLUTLY F-ING FREEZING IN THE HOUSE.  I came downstairs and remarked on the icicle-like nature of our home to my husband.  He told me that he thought it was too cold, too, and went ahead and turned the heat up to 50 degrees F.  Um... what?  UP?  To FIFTY??  Where was it before?!  It was turned all the way down, he tells me.  He thought I'd done it as a cost-saving measure.  No!  I set it for 62, not below 40!  WTF?  Our current working assumption is that one of the children got to it.... Erg!  More reasons to get a new thermostat with a COVER OVER THE CONTROLS!!!

I did treat myself today, seeing as how I at least didn't do a BAD job at labor assistance, and got myself a grande Peppermint Mocha from Starbucks.  Oh man.  Beantree, I see what you mean... Da-amn!

R.

My friend KH is in the *suck-suck-suck-suck* part of labor. Where you have fairly regular contractions that are enough to, for example, keep you awake, but are not kicking over into full-blown labor. This is absolutely exhausting, not to mention nerve-wracking. We spent the morning hanging out, walking around wally-world, and she's definitely in early labor. Who knows how long this could last, though? I finally left to pick up my kids and head home, with explicit instructions to keep me posted (I mean that, K, I know you're reading this!). Some of the last few contractions she had before I left looked quite tricky--she was having some trouble talking through them, and that's a good sign. But I do hope she's able to get some rest.

On the other hand, my kids were apparently total angels over at KP's--she had no problem at all with them, they played happily and quietly and.... hey! That's not fair! Why don't they ever do this for me?!?!

Now, to figure out another way to get to KH's besides on the moped. That was okay today, since it was around 60 degrees (WTF?), but it's gonna suck soon, since the bottom's supposed to drop out of the system tomorrow (I've heard about expected highs in the 30s, eesh). Not fun on a moped, but doable. But if it's snowing.... I'm in serious trouble. *plotting*

R.