Visual Addendum to Babies

Making ‘eating people’ with the kiddos.  These have been highly popular.  Just some pics to show that, despite my rants, I do love these kids.

Anybody Have A Spare Colon?

As spotted recently in the Metro Newspaper in Boston. Actually, the guy’s name was Colon. Unfortunate.

Das Boot -or- I’ve Been Plagued With Jumping Pains

I feel gimpeeeeeeee!

(Actually, I feel gimpy, but I didn’t think I’d get the same fire engine holler effect if I wrote the word with a bunch of y’s.)  Oh, and, I feel gimpy, like ‘having a limp’ or even better, the ‘US and Canadian offensive slang referring to a disabled person’ but not the definition about leather and chains and a ball gag in your mouth.  Just so we’re clear.

And this is why:

My newest fashion accessory is an aircast walking boot, which I’m supposed to have on all the time, except when sleeping, showering or doing physical therapy.  Thank god for physical therapy.

What it took to get me here: X-rays, an MRI, blood work to check my vitamin and iron levels and, finally, a bone scan.

The boot is on me because my right ankle is apparently suffering from a talar neck (ankle bone) stress reaction, anterior impingement and extensor tendinitis.  In other words, my tendon is inflamed because it keeps getting rubbed by my bone, which is swollen/bruised/generally very angry because I did too much stomping in Turkey.  Basically, the shin splints in my legs?  Well, the same thing is going on in my ankle too. Super.

I had to quit yoga for the time being because of the pain in my ankle, so I relocated to the elliptical at the gym.  Now I’ve been booted (pun intended) from the elliptical and told I can swim.  I suck at swimming.  So, basically I can do physical therapy… and I’m considering Boston Sports Club’s arm-powered ‘bike’ to at least get my heart rate up.  He-Man arms, here I come…

The boot will be on for the next 2-3 weeks while all pressure/impact is taken off my ankle.  After that, the idea is that I’ll be able to have a normal or semi-normal range of motion without pain, and I can slowly start back on impact exercises to get my bones used to all that jumping again.  Which they’ll need to be by the beginning of April when I head to Turkey to stat boot camp style training.  (Hehe. I said ‘boot’ again.)

In addition to Das Boot, I’m spending about an hour a day on at-home PT exercises and going into physical therapy twice a week.  I’ve been foam rolling like nobody’s business (if you don’t know about this brilliant(ly painful) technique, you should look into it) and my flexibility has increased immensely .  As soon as I hit a full center split, which I anticipate will be in the next couple of weeks, I’m taking pictures and putting up a new Facebook profile picture. Permanently.  A small consolation for having to lug this ankle succubus around.

I gotta say that my physical therapist, Dr Bridget Quinn at Beth Israel Hospital, is absolutely wonderful.  She works with the Boston Ballet, and has me doing my hands-on PT with another Boston Ballet PT.  She’s been very pro-active about getting me the tests I need and making sure I’m all healed by the time I leave the country again.  I feel like a lot of therapists wouldn’t have been as forward and she’s been or taken my time constraint into consideration as much.  She’s also referred me to a Boston Ballet nutritionist now, who I’ll talk with to make sure I’m getting all the right kinds of calcium and vitamin D, etc, to make sure my bones stay strong.  Talk about seeing the whole picture.  She also – without fail – always greets me with a “Hello Miss Hannah,” which I find very endearing.  Kudos to Dr Quinn, and to Dr Nisha Basu, also at BIDMC, who referred me to her.

Snapshot – Everyone’s Gotta Have A Corner of the World

I see two homeless men – presumably homeless – certainly unemployed and wasting away mid-day – fighting across the street in Central Square.  They’re outside the Payless, hovering by the two benches that sit face to face, and I realize this is their home.  They may or may not sleep here when it’s warm, but it’s an area they’ve created for themselves and imagined into home.

I realize these adults are playing the same game I played as a child, outside the empty garage on my street.  My bicycle was a car and the handle of the never-opened door there was the gas pump.  There was nothing special about that garage, but for me it was a veritable indication of being a part of the grown up world; of having something.  Every time I was there, I was real.

These men fighting across the street probably have that same comfort of belonging; to their benches and to the Payless exterior which they never seem to stray far from.

The Road Less Traveled

I’ve always thought of Europe as the training-wheeled bike of travel. It’s well-published upon.  It’s safe.  One can buy pre-packaged tours there, and most of us studied one of the major European languages in high school.  This last point leads to delirious orgasms that we’ll actually be able to communicate with those fine European folk, and, if we can’t and we’re under 30, maybe we can still get far enough to get that tall dark and handsome one into bed.

The travelers that already reside in Europe can jaunt within the continent easily, especially now that most of them are playing with the same currency.  And those of us from North America feel pretty comfy touring to the lands of our ancestors.  The only simpler form of international travel for an American would be the obligatory high school border crossing.  (I write this under the assumption that Americans living south of the Mason Dixon line head to Mexico to enjoy an altered state of consciousness thanks to the altered drinking age, just as us Yankees head to Canada.  I could be wrong.)

I’m no different than most of America in that my first international travel was a pre-packaged tour of Italy sponsored by my high school when I was 16.  Shortly after that I re-traced my missing steps and did the New Years in Canada thing.  That experience came complete with photos of our hotel bathtub brimming with beer.

What makes European travelers different from Third World Country travelers, I’ve been wondering.  When I was 17 I decided to take a semester abroad with the American Field Service.  While my friends that had also chosen to study abroad chose the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway, I chose Venezuela.  My reasoning was a mumble jumble of vegetarianism, Spanish language and a love of Latino culture.  And that’s what gets me: What had me, a teenager who’d barely been out of the country and knew jack about life outside small-town Maine, all worked up about Latino, second- to third-world culture?

Fast forward to 2008.  I’ve already studied abroad again in college, this time to another knee pads and helmet type of country, and now I’m looking for my next vice.  I want to do post-collegiate work in physical theatre and I start my directionless search where all good generation Yers do: Google.

My short list for this adventure leaves me looking at Spain or France, and in the end, I choose France.  While most females spend years dreaming of springtime in Paris at the foot of the Tour Eiffel, the city was never on my radar.  To be quite honest, I depart for France feeling a little underwhelmed.  Another cookie cutter foreign city.

This March I leave for Mumbai where I’ll spend three weeks volunteering with street children.  I imagine I’ll be able to get by pretty comfortably there as the rupee is so weak.  From Mumbai, I’ll fly directly to Turkey, where I’ll start working for a wage that, I imagine, is less than I made in high school.  I wonder, When did the training wheels come off my travel bike?

Goose Feathers and Flannel Stitching

As I lay here in it, I can report in no uncertain terms, that my bed is amazing.  With a capital A.

In the past 365 days I’ve spent less than 10 nights in my own bed.  When I first left it I didn’t really miss it at all.  In fact, the thrill of a foreign bed – a Parisan bed – was absolute joie de vivre. And then there was returning home for Christmases and long-weekend visits, I was always greeted with a spread freshly made by my mother.  (And there’s something special about anything that we don’t make ourselves, but especially when it’s made by our mothers, and especially especially when it’s food, laundry or a bed.)

Then there was the three month period I slept on a single-size air mattress on the floor of a friend’s nearly empty study.  Air mattresses, of course, make that plasticy sound when you roll around on them a lot – as I do.  And they need re-inflating periodically.  But it was a nice way to judge the passing of the season, and it was a motorized inflator with a little remote control tethered to the mattress, so it won gadget points for that.  It was the smallest air mattress I’ve ever slept on, hands down, but that summer the living was free, and so I really couldn’t complain.

Then there was Turkey, of course, where I test drove the life of a true roadie.  Nothing but hotel beds for 90 square days.  After the first one (which I only slept on for two nights, thank god) I was left feeling a little nervous (not to mention tired).  That first slumber pad in Turkey had one slat in particular that stuck me in the ribs when I lay down.  Apparently most of the other fellows had a squeaking problem with theirs, which, I think, I would have preferred.  Ear plugs are wonderful little inventions.

Luckily the other hotel beds weren’t as bad as this one.  The queen-sizer I slept in in Antalya for five weeks was downright luxurious, with more pillows than appendages to grab them with.  I don’t remember much about the beds in the UAE because I was wretchedly ill during that tour and not even a wonder-mattress could lull me to sleep.  The Holiday Inn Express in Belgium was pretty standard.  And even the cursed Lion Hotel in Istanbul (here’s the link if you want to know where NOT to stay when in Constantinople, if, for no other reason, the food is worse than the beds, and that’s not saying a whole lot) was passable compared to that first place.  The Lion Hotel was nothing more than a couple of single mattresses stacked on the floor.  They were short mattresses too (with two of us in the room passing 5′8″) but the pillows were fluffy and the heat made the shoddy bedspreads not matter a whole lot.

There’s been a couch or two in there over the past year, as well as some other miscellaneous sleep spots; a loveseat, some airplanes and even the floor once.  I’ve spent a good couple of weeks in my male roommate’s bed when he’s been out of town.  This was my only futon experience this year: creaky, slanted downward towards the center and cold since it lays on the floor and what little heat there is in a poverty-stricken Boston apartment in winter is scant – and rises.  None of these have been five stars.

Until two nights ago when I climbed back into my own bed.  It didn’t matter that it was made by someone else, and not the way I usually do it.  I didn’t matter that her pillows were under and around my head and that the bottom sheet wasn’t flannel like I usually do in winter.  It didn’t matter that it was my bed, but not my bed, since it’s technically been sublet to a friend on a long-term basis.  None of this mattered.  Because, snuggled under my own comforter, and my own brightly-colored throw, I felt my mattress beneath me, and knew I was home.  If even just for a few days.

Playing With Babies

Being a nanny has taught me a lot about the way I’d like my own family to happen someday.  I’ve watched four little children grow up in Cambridge and Somerville over the last three years, and it’s been an extremely rewarding, though oftentimes quite draining, experience.  The two families I work for are both ‘Harvard families’.  That is to say, three of the four parents work as professors at Harvard University, and the fourth as a physician at a Boston hospital, which is also affiliated with the university.

Other than being good parents, these two families couldn’t be more different.  One family had their two children back to back – Irish twins as some people call it.  The others’ are three and a half years apart.  One family’s home is clean, organized and based on minimalism.  The other family lives in an almost perpetual state of chaos, and has so many things they rarely know where any of them are.

The way I work with the kids is quite different, depending on which house I’m at.  Rules about hand-washing and putting toys away and bedtimes and tantrums range from second nature with the toddlers to non-existent.  I’ve sort of gotten the benefit of test-driving two very different ways of parenting without having to imprint either one of them on my own children and later realizing I’ve done something I wish I hadn’t and being stuck with the results.

The next kids I care for on a regular basis, however, are going to be my own.  I stole this life mantra from a friend of mine, but most of the best ideas in life are stolen. This was definitely worth the piracy.

Nannying can be incredibly rewarding. But, as I said, it can also be incredibly draining.  I love the kids I care for, but I can never love them like a mother loves her own children, and so, I can never have the patience a mother does.  There are days when I just plain don’t want to see those kids.  When I resent needing them to earn my money and when anyone under four feet tall feels like a burden, not the pleasure they should be.

I’m still nannying these days, even after professing I wouldn’t go back to it.  But it’s just for a month until I take off again for my next adventure abroad.  I’m trying to use this month as another learning experience.

I’ve been pleasantly refreshed by the male Turkish attitude about marriage and starting a family (“Yes, of course I want kids. I can’t wait to be a father.” vs “Kids? Are you kidding me? I’m going to be a bachelor for the rest of my life and if you dare mention the word ‘marriage’ again I may just run screaming from the room, even though I’m closer to 30 than 13.”).

And last week I had a bone scan on my ankle. The physician I work for mentioned that it was a completely harmless procedure, but nothing I’d want to do if I was planning on getting pregnant in the next year.   “Pregnant?” I thought.  Have I now entered the phase of my life where getting pregnant is a realistic possibility in under five years?  Yeah, I guess I have. Woah.

This makes me want to stop taking care of other people’s children as a career and start focusing on my own career.  And loving myself, and doing things I love, which gets me ready to love my own family.

Hope In Haiti – A Personal Story

I’ve decided to start posting some of the really cool internet news bits I find (or generally, I’m showed) on my blog.  Generally, I re-post these on Facebook, or wherever I find them, but am now starting to think folks on those sites are already overloaded by newsmedia ’shares’.  (Punctuation, mom!)  This is my way of sharing things that are somehow noteworthy to folks that might not have seen them otherwise.  Click on the photo to read the story.  Cheers.

Twitch

I like to read in bed.  I write non-fiction.  One of my favorite things about visiting home is using my mom’s cosmetics.  I have more than one father-figure in my life, but none of them are my biological father.

I sweat like a pig.  I use a Nalgene bottle in equal parts for its environmental-friendliness and because I’m a klutz.  I can say ‘me too’ and ‘I am American’ in five languages.  I have the cold but love to look at th snow.

I’ve never broken a bone.  I used to draw on my bedroom walls as a child.  Great art makes me cry.  I dream of getting married and having children but I swear I won’t do either until I’m really ready.  I’m sometimes afraid that day will never come, or I won’t know when it has.

I’m a cat lover.  I’ve never paid for my own auto insurance, but I started working when I was 14 years old.  I believe that I love the beach because my mom does and that I run because my dad does.  (My real one.)

I have an uncle that I haven’t talked with in six years – for no particular reason.  I can stick my finger in my eye without issue but it took me 45 minutes the first time I had to put contacts in.  I sunburn easily.  I earned a 3 on my AP calculus test in high school.  I’ve made love in five different languages.  My hair isn’t really red.

It routinely takes me more than 45 minutes to fall asleep.  I’m currently considering forging my college transcript to earn 10,000 frequent flyer miles.  I’ve opened credit cards just for the discounts.  I generally drink close to five liters of water a day.  I love my handwriting and I type with all 10 fingers.

I believe in God.  And I believe She’s a man and a woman.

Falling Up

A Facebook status launched into the cyber abyss, and suddenly I know another person who is changing his path, leaving where he is, where he’s been for the past 11 years, to follow his dreams.

The world is overwhelming. More so in the United States than elsewhere, I think, as we love to put our ideas, our options out there for people to see and hope that they support.

I want to follow my dreams: I did before I left for Turkey and I do even more now that I’ve returned from Turkey, but am overwhelmed by the dreams out there. I could follow any of them. Which one?

I see Haiti on the news. I think of going there. I see Pakistan in Time Magazine and I dream of going there. I see my own backyard as I walk to the T and I hear my name called from there. From the internet, from the television, from inside my heart and outside in the world- everywhere I turn I seem to find another cause I want to pursue.

How do I narrow my vision? How do I put blinders on to 98% of the problems in the world and focus my attention on just two? How do I take my desire to learn neverendingly and buckle down and take what I’ve already learned and teach it to someone else? Use it to help someone in need?

Today I feel overwhelmed by my desire to do too much. I wonder how I can possibly put an order to my dreams: Write a book. Learn to dance. Create my own art and travel the world.