Curiouser

Since you were all so helpful on the arrowroot question (I like Domestic Godess's answer best), maybe you can help me figure out why Blogger uploaded my post twice?!

Mysterious

Can anyone tell me why the hell I have arrowroot in my spice cabinet?

Mysterious

Can anyone tell me why the hell I have arrowroot in my spice cabinet?

Back In the Saddle: Give Me Your Advice; Win Baked Goods!

After last summer's weekly fundraising baking nearly killed me, I quoth NEVERMORE! in a big loud voice to all who would listen (mostly Michael). I was totally willing to hold yard sales and badger friends and family for donations, but never again would I succumb to the hamster wheel of baking non-stop like some kind of deranged sorcerer's apprentice.

Karma's a beeyotch.

A few months ago I chaperoned a 6th grade dance (don't get me started -- some of those girls have better lingerie than I do). I was chatting with the organizer of the dance, who is a very lovely person, and she suggested with great enthusiasm that we hold a fundraising bake sale for PKD at the next 6th grade dance. How do you say no to that? You can't.

The next 6th grade dance is a week from tonight.

Now, I'm not in a panic -- I have several tubs of scratch cookie dough already in the freezer, ready to bake up -- but I am in a quandary. To wit, how many cookies can/will 100 sweaty, jacked-up 6th graders eat/buy in a two-hour period? If I over-bake, the excess will somehow magically apply itself to my butt hips, and nobody wants that.

********

I have only myself to blame for this next one. Every spring, our delightful little hamlet holds a Charity Fun Fair, in which town center closes to motor traffic and dozens of booths, each supporting a specific charity and manned by volunteers, spring up all along the sidewalks. It's on April 20 this year. There are moon bounces and picnic areas and live music and it's generally a lot of fun. We're going to have a table selling baked goods (and homemade doggie biscuits!), and I have no concerns about quantity on this one -- as much as I'm able to bake, that's how much we'll sell. Period.

However, it was suggested to me by one of the organizers that the booths with activities attract more traffic and tend to raise more money. Now, I'm not about to set up a ring toss or anything like that. But...... what do y'all think of a raffle, with the prize being a custom special occasion cake? I'd put some parameters in place as to scope (no three-tiered wedding cakes, yo), and make a little display with color copies of some of my past cakes. Do you think people would buy raffle tickets for such an item, and is $1 a good ticket price?

********

One last question for the pretty, pretty internets. I'd like to have a name associated with the baking -- not a business name, per se, but some kind of name that invokes baking and elegance and sugary goodness. Something with more polish than "Cookies for a Cure." Wanna make this one a contest? The winning name will get a dozen fresh-baked cookies hand-delivered (if you're local) or mailed (if you're not). I'll even let you pick the flavor.

********

Tell me what you think on questions 1 & 2, and leave name suggestions in the comments. Thank you in advance for saving my brain from exploding.

Braggin' On My Husband, Part Deux

So, you remember the international song writing contest in which Michael and his composer are finalists for "I'm Not Your Friend"? Results of that contest are still pending, but they've just learned that they've WON FIRST PLACE in the Rock/Alternative category of The Great American Song Contest. How frockin' cool is that!?

You can listen to the song here. Rock on!

The Kindness of Virtual Strangers

At a chat board I frequent, there is a poster who has clearly been struggling with severe depression for most of his life. In recent weeks, his posts have become more and more desperate, and more than once he has posted "goodbye" messages, only to be talked down off the ledge by the group.

A few weeks ago, after several days of silence, a newcomer joined the board to inform us that out of the blue he had received an email from this person, who was an old friend, and that the depressed poster had indeed made a serious attempt on his life and was currently hospitalized. There was an outpouring of support from the chat board community, lots of messages of courage and hope that our friend would now receive the treatment that he clearly needs.

Silence followed. Then, two days ago, the newcomer came back to inform us that in fact the suicide attempt had been successful -- that our virtual friend was gone. As you'd expect, there was an outpouring of sorrow, messages of grief, and fervent pleas that the newcomer express our condolences to the family.

To the shock of most, last night our depressed friend came back and posted that there had been a mistake in communication. That he's still with us, though he had made an attempt on his life. However, it quickly became clear that he had masqueraded as a newcomer and posted the misinformation himself, in a misguided attempt to "see what it would be like" if he died. He finally confessed the deception in a post full of self-loathing and -recrimination.

Many of the members of our chat community are quite upset, feeling manipulated and gulled, and perhaps understandably so. Myself, I cannot bring myself to feel anything but compassion for this poor young man, who is obviously so deeply troubled. So what if his illness and lies have lead to my having "wasted" my time and kindness responding to a sham? I can think of no better use for my compassion and kindness. I do not grudge him even one little bit of my time, thoughts, hopes, words, or worry. I cannot conceive of reacting with anger to a person who is clearly in excruciating pain. I hope it will always be thus.

How Is This Possible?

This evening when I got home from work and kissed the kids, I noticed distinct, darkening mustache fuzz on the (blond) not-quite-twelve year old.

If you need me, I'll be numbing the pain with tequila.

Black Helicopters?

Should I be alarmed that Sitemeter thinks that someone in Washington, D.C. with a URL of usda.gov visited my blog? But then, what could the Department of Agriculture possibly have to do with the health insurance cartel industry?.....

Spooky.

Ohhhhhhhh, wait. They linked over from Well Read Hostess. I feel better already.

My Health Insurance, Let Me Show You It

I've been meaning to post about health insurance for some time now. You may remember my frustration back in the fall, as I (a Finance & HR professional, fer chrissakes!) tried to suss out exactly what Michael's employers were offering us for 2008, and how much it was going to cost us, and how I failed miserably. Would it surprise you that it's taken me three months of living with this fakakta plan to understand what it actually does? And, would it surprise you that I'm keeping verrrrrrrrrrrry detailed records of all of the expenses and reimbursements and deductibles and nonsense?

Would it surprise you that I'm eager to share all of this crapola with the pretty internets?

Here's the dope: my employer covers my health insurance in full at company expense, and if I add any dependents, I pay their entire freight. Michael's Big Corporate Employer offers an array of plans from which to choose, with varying levels of employee premium responsibility. His company pays a portion of the premiums for dependents, so we have always enrolled the kids in his company's plan. Used to be they'd offer at least one straight-up, no-deductible HMO amongst the menu. No longer. After beating our heads against the dining room table repeatedly careful consideration, we chose an Aetna plan which includes a $2,000 deductible, wherein Michael's employer funds a Healthcare Reimbursement Account (HRA) on our behalf up to $1,000. In other words, our net deductible (for Michael and the kids) will be $1,000. I have a straight-up PPO plan through my lovely employer, so I'm only on the hook for (hefty) co-pays. (I choose the group insurance for our staff, so I have only myself to blame.)

So what's this all costing? I don't have a firm figure for what Michael's employer is paying for him and the kids, but given my knowledge of the benefits market, I think $600/month is a good guess. Plus, of course, his employer is paying $1,000 into our HRA. We pay an additional $120/month (pre-tax, through payroll deductions). My employer pays $212 for my PPO from Health Assurance.

TOTAL ANNUAL PREMIUM & DEDUCTIBLE COSTS:
$10,744 (employers/estimated); $2,440 (us)

So far, in our little dual-career, upper-middle-class family of professionals, we're paying 18.5% of our family's health insurance costs for the year.

But the fun's just starting....

Until we reach our $2,000 deductible for Michael and the kids, we are paying full retail out-of-pocket for everything. Doctor's visit? $133. Asthma meds for 3 months (for ONE of the four asthmatics in the house)? $500. We have already chewed up the entire $1,000 HRA and are plunging head-first into the second $1,000 of the deductible. And it's only March.

But here's the tricky part. After we reach the top of the second $1,000 of the deductible, we stop paying full retail and start paying co-pays. I figure we'll reach this point around June at the rate we're going. And the truly flummoxing issue is that, in addition to the HRA, we have a Flexible Spending Account (FSA) with Michael's Big Corporate Employer, which allows us to designate an amount of money to be withheld from Michael's check each month (tax-free, of course), to be used for reimbursement of medical, prescription, OTC medical expenses for the whole family.

If you think I lost sleep trying to decide how high to fund the FSA, you'd be right.

We finally just stuck a pin in it and funded it at $3,500 -- higher than in past years, due to the $1,000 of deductible we are going to have incurred. The FSA is use-it-or-lose-it, so if we have any kind of balance left at year-end, on quiet nights you will be able to hear me weeping softly into my tequila. But honestly, I think we're pretty safe at $3,500, as the drug co-pays on Michael and kids are outlandish.

So what I think I'll do is post periodic updates. You'll hear about it when we top out the deductible, and you'll hear about how much money we're paying in co-pays. So far we're out of pocket a whopping $1,500 (including the $1,000 that gets reimbursed) for the year (including dental and vision). I'll be VERY curious to analyze our year-end numbers, comparing premium + out of pocket expenses against full retail costs for all of the services we use, but I'm not sure I'll have access to enough info to do that. I suspect that I'd find that the insurance company is making money on us.

The bottom line is: if it takes a reasonably smart Ivy-League graduate who does benefits as a (part of her) profession this much time, effort and angst to really understand this brave new insurance world, what hope is there for the not-as-educated, not-as-motivated among us? I fear that the insurance companies secretly hope that we're all going to become so annoyed and frustrated by them that we're going to stop paying attention to what our benefits are -- and then they'll really have us by the short and curlies.

Do you know how much you are paying of your health insurance burden?

I Think It's Cute

Theo sits with his knees splayed out. I find it very endearing, like kindergarteners sitting around in a circle indian-style.

A Word to the Wise

If you ever make the challah recipe from Rose Levy Berenbaum's "Bread Bible", do yourself a favor and shape it into two smaller loaves, rather than one large loaf.

Did I say large? That thing's about to eat Tokyo.

Cobwebs

Must remember to tell Michael that Heng's Thai now has a sushi bar! Not that I can eat sushi anymore, but he can eat sushi while I eat veggie Drunken Noodles.

Must remember next time I order veggie Drunken Noodles to tell them to hold the tofu.

Aristotle Ain't Got Nothin' on Him

Last night after bath time the kids and I snuggled up to watch old home movies circa 1998. Quin was 2+, Garrick an infant.

(They love to watch movies of themselves as young 'uns. We had quite a little film festival a few months ago while Michael was dubbing the old camcorder tapes onto DVDs.)

As an infant, Garrick was rather... solemn. Once he started locomoting his inner imp came into full flower, but as a newborn he was very contemplative. When I pointed this out last night, Garrick said (in all seriousness), "I must have been very busy thinking about my phisolophy."

As far as I can tell, his phisolophy thus far consists mainly of pasta and Bionicles......

By Request

For my lovely friend Marcia, who had a birthday last week -- a virtual birthday cake.



Originally created for my dear grandmother, may she rest in peace.

Oh, the Baking

I love it so, but must stop overextending myself.

This past weekend, in order from least to most complex:

Lemon angel food cake, made with 1/2 Splenda for my diabetic father-in-law:

As a rule, I don't like to bake with sugar substitutes, but Splenda does pretty well if you don't sub for more than half the sugar and if you use it in a recipe with lemon or apple or other strong, fruity flavors. In a straight-up butter cake, Splenda's metallic aftertaste comes through too strongly.

Chocolate chip almond chiffon cake with almond crunch topping:

This is a favorite from an old issue of Fine Cooking. I've made it before, so you'd think I'd remember to cut back on the milk in the glaze, right? The glaze was much too thin to hold all of the almond crunchy goodness. Didn't matter much, though -- people just dove in with their fingers to rescue the nuts. This is a light, bouncy, moist, flavorful cake. Just about perfection.

Finally, for our little dinner soiree, a recipe from Chef Norman Love and my 3-day pastry class at the French Pastry School in Chicago last fall. I realize that I never got around to writing a full post about the class; I must rectify that soon.

Cream cheese mousse with an apple jelly center, almond financier and walnut streusel:

(mine)

(Chef Love's)

Components in my kitchen, prior to assembly:

On the left, crunchy cinnamon walnut streusel bases. On the right, buttery soft almond financier cookies.

Apple jelly centers with cubes of poached apple and vanilla bean.

This petit gateau gets assembled in the ring molds upside down, which is how you get the nice, clean upper edge.

Both the pan and the rings are lined with acetate for smooth release. The rings get filled about 1/3 with mousse, then the financier gets placed in, followed by the apple center. More mousse to fill in the gaps, then a crunchy streusel round as a base. It all gets frozen to set, and then unmolded and decorated with the marbled white chocolate band around and chocolate decorations on top.

Here's what it looks like inside (from the class tasting):

This was one of my favorite desserts from the class, flavor-wise. The tart apple jelly center is perfectly offset by the mild cream cheese mousse and the intense butteriness of the financier. The crunchy streusel is key, as having a crunchy element slows the eater down and distributes the flavors around the mouth more fully. White chocolate is a perfect complement to the strong flavors within.

Having successfully tackled this tiny treasure, I want to do try more of Chef Love's recipes... how soon do you think I can get another dinner party on the calendar?

Audit Week

As defined by me, to Garrick: "People from outside my company come in and look at all of the work I did over the last year, and try to find things I did wrong."

Pass the tequila.

The Hell Was I Thinking?

The kids have been bundled off to my in-laws for an overnight, and tonight we're having friends over for a grown-up dinner party.

Tomorrow, we're going to Michael's cousins' for an open house.

Tomorrow evening, we're celebrating my mother-in-law's birthday with dinner chez Schultz.

Guess who's baking for all three events?

Kill me now.

(Pix next week when I recover.)

We Had A Time

I made some new pals this week! To kick off Bossy's Excellent Road Trip, a gaggle of us Philly-area blogging gals got together to do some drinking bowling. In between catching up with my childhood friend Well Read Hostess and getting a contact buzz from Domestic Goddess's irrepressible energy, my bowling pretty much bit, but I'm glad to report that at least I did not FALL ON MY ASS this time, as I did the last time I went bowling. I may have tied for last place, but I came home unbruised. Fun times!

(Oh how I wish I could bottle Domestic Goddess -- I'd be a millionaire several times over.)

It was fun to be out and about, fun to meet new bloggers and catch up with old friends, fun to drink a beer on a weeknight (I'm out of control, I tell you). I spent yesterday completely immersed in everyone's mostly-new-to-me blogs and heartily recommend you do the same. They are funny, touching, creative, heartfelt, fresh, goofy, and fun. And good writers, to boot. Doesn't get much better than that.

(Extra grrrrl power points if you can name the [old] TV show from which I cribbed the post title....)

Celebrity Encounters, Part Two

Watching "Michael Clayton" the other night reminded me of my Sydney Pollack story, and since Michael's already heard it (a lot), it y'all's turn.

While I was living in NYC being a waitress actress, I booked a nice, 6-day gig as an extra in "Bright Lights, Big City". It was a club scene, and I had a red mini-skirt, a black mesh top, and spike heels, and apparently that's all you needed to book at $90 a day plus all the bagels you could eat from the craft services table. It was a pretty sweet deal at the time (ah, youth).

Day One of the shoot was a mob scene -- we were shooting at Tunnel Club and they had the place packed with sweaty extras. By Day Three the crowd had thinned out, as they were shooting in sequence, from peak clubbing hours into the very wee hours of the morning. On Day Four, they turned on the fog machines, to fill out the atmosphere around the few dozen of us extras still working (and by working, I of course mean acting like drunken club-goers).

Now, this was a troubled shoot. The director we were working for was eventually fired and the movie started over from scratch with a new director, so don't rent the movie and crawl through the club scenes looking for me -- I'm not there. There was tension on the set, though, and Michael J. Fox did lose his cool once that I witnessed, when a day-player who had a few lines with him missed her mark for the fourth time in a row (dumbass).

Sydney Pollack was producing the flick, and showed up on the set around Day Three, to babysit the director, I'm sure. He pretty much sat in his chair quietly and didn't interact with anyone, and after the initial flurry of recognition, we all ignored him.

So, Day Four. Fog machines. We had been working long days -- about 10 hours, mostly on our feet -- and I'd been out late drinking the night before with one of the PAs (oh hush). Midway through the day, the combination of fog + fatigue got to me, and I started getting a little woozly. Then suddenly I was very woozly. I managed to make my way to an exit and sat outside on the curb near the trailers, sucking what passed at the time for fresh air. One of the drivers saw me and must have ratted me out, because in a few moments a PA was by my side, making sure I wasn't about to screw up the film's insurance die. By this time I was fine, and he accompanied me back into the club.

Back inside, while passing from the shooting area back to the extras area, Sydney Pollack stopped me. He was full of concern and truly sweet, asking several times whether I was sure I was okay, and offering me his director's chair (!!) so I could sit down. Of course, I didn't take his chair -- Sydney Pollack! -- I wobbled back to the extras area and sat my tushy down on a hard metal folding chair, like the rest of them/us.

But I never forgot what a complete gentleman he was. While sitting watching his project circling the drain, he still took time out to check on a $90-a-day non-union extra. That's class.

Powerless

Ask me how my weekend was. Go on, I dare you.

It monsooned all day on Saturday. If you have not had the joy of shopping at the wholesale club during a monsoon, well, let's just say that it is not an example of humanity at its collective best. Grownups who should know better were not using their indoor voices and several of them deserved time outs. Believe me, I was tempted.

I escaped relatively unscathed, though wet, and collected the kids from their final Flash Animation class. Note to self: learn to park illegally better. My illegal parking place was so far from the front door that, despite my umbrella, we all were soaked by the time we made it back to the car. By now I was exuding rather squishable quality that was really not very pleasant, or attractive.

The drive home was diverting enough, as the localized flooding gave rise to a detailed discussion of hydroplaning and the physics thereof. But I must have explained it wrong, as I'm not sure I convinced the boys that the danger factor outweighs the coolness factor...

We got home, dried off, and wrangled lunch. Between a pending dinner party and upcoming fundraising bake sales, I had an ambitious To Do list. I kicked everyone out of the kitchen and spent a few hours blanching and toasting nuts, making beurre noisette, and a few other little preparatory details. I was just about ready to tackle the sinkfull of dirty dishes and give the kitchen over to Michael for dinner prep -- and go have myself a much-needed lie-down -- when the lights went out.

And stayed out.

(Between running to Target for battery-operated lamps and to the local Chinese restaurant for take-out, guess who didn't get her lie-down? But the kids and I were treated to the once-in-a-lifetime experience of driving along Michigan Avenue and encountering an enormous evergreen tree which had been uprooted by the high winds and was lying perfectly perpendicular to the street, spanning the entire width and then some. Good times.)

Theo reacted very sensibly to the situation. Lights out = time to sleep. Would that we could all have managed so brilliantly. Instead, the kids melted down due to the lateness of dinner (and the gathering darkness), I ran around like a maniac gathering batteries, and Michael hauled lots of firewood. (Did you know that an oil-based furnace needs electricity to, you know, TURN ITSELF ON?! You're welcome.) Due to an oddity in the wiring of our street, my parents and all houses to their south still had power, so Michael and I fobbed the kids off on them for overnight and huddled 'round the fireplace with Theo, Coleman lanterns and good books for several hours before bundling up in sweatshirts and going to bed.

The house thermostat read 56* when we woke up on Sunday, and yes, that is mighty chilly for indoors. Our hot water heater is electric, so we were not only without heat, we were without showers (or the ability to wash the #$%^&* sinkfull of dishes leftover from Saturday). PECO's emergency recording was estimating power restoration at 7am Monday morning, which was inconceivable! The kids had slept well and were perfectly happy at home with books and games and no computer, so I begged my mother to let me escape from my own filthy kitchen borrow her kitchen for a few hours. In addition to the wet laundry, I hauled down the street:

• 10 sheets of parchment paper
• 9 granny smith apples
• 8 pounds of butter
• 7 pounds of flour
• one 6-quart Kitchen Aid
• 5 pounds of sugar
• 4 rolls of sable dough
• 3 mini-muffin tins
• 2 dozen eggs
• and a handful of vanilla beans.

At some point, Michael and the kids wandered down with the final Lord of the Rings film (our Saturday night movie night had fallen victim to the outage), so all were all warmly ensconced. At about 5:30pm I'd had reached my limit and my back was killing me -- I had really over done it. So I packed up the clean laundry, the cookie dough, and all of my baking crap, and headed home to lie down.

The first thing I noticed was that Theo seemed unusually happy to see me. The second thing I noticed was that the lights were back on. Huzzah! I called Michael, who zipped right home with the kids. We ran around organizing and tidying, unhooking extension cords (our neighbors' son had brought up a generator and we'd hooked the 'fridge up at his invitation, bless him), washing dishes, putting away baking supplies, cooking dinner, and generally trying to fit 2 days worth of weekend into 2 hours. (The careful reader will notice that, once again, my lie-down was deflected by the Energy Gods, damn them.)

I did finally get to sit down after dinner with a new-to-me Margaret Atwood ("Alias Grace") while Michael and the kids finished watching the movie. I even managed to get the laundry folded before collapsing into bed and demanding George Clooney as a reward for the level of exhaustion I'd worked myself into. Luckily, Netflix had sent "Michael Clayton" earlier in the week and my Michael wisely capitulated.

And it was very good. If one must torture oneself with a weekend without electricity and too much baking, The Clooney is an excellent antidote.

C'mere, You Big Stud Muffin

Rose Levy Berenbaum does have a way with recipe titles, does she not? From her Bread Bible, I present the Stud Muffin:

The dough is laced with grated Parmesan and Romano cheeses, chunks of Gruyere, and a healthy hit of ground black pepper. The Gruyere was enough to sell me on it.

Ready for the final rise:

After the final rise, one gilds the lily by gently skewering the surface of the dough and inserting yet more chunks of Gruyere. Come to mama.

My souffle dish is a little bigger than the 2 quarts she calls for, so I didn't get the same lovely, high muffin top that's pictured in the book.

Warm out of the oven, the crust is light and crispy and the bread is full of flavor. And it is very close to heaven when you encounter a melty chunk of Gruyere as you nibble your way through damn near half the loaf at one sitting. (Don't say I didn't warn you.)

The Kidney Post

Since it's no longer just my mother and husband reading, it's probably time to address the kidney portion of the blog, huh? For those who arrived after last summer's fundraising madness, I am one of three members of my family (so far) who have been diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease. PKD is a genetic condition causing uncontrolled growth of cysts in the kidneys (and often in the liver, as well). The cysts create excessive scar tissue, which eventually leads to loss of kidney function and total kidney failure in 50% of patients. Luckily, the cysts in the liver rarely lead to liver failure.

PKD affects one in 500 people -- more than Down syndrome, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy and sickle cell anemia combined. There is currently no treatment or cure for PKD, though scientists are hard at work. The only treatments for kidney failure are dialysis and organ transplantation.

My father seems to have been the first in our family with this disease. He was diagnosed when his kidneys were already severely impaired, and a kidney transplant soon followed. I was diagnosed somewhat by accident 5 or 6 years later, at the age of 19. My two brothers were subsequently tested, and thankfully do not have the disease.

At the age of 19 you don't really worry about a disease that may or may not cause you problems in 20 years, so I really didn't give my condition much thought until my pregnancies (10 & 12 years ago). Pregnancy is rough on the kidneys, and my doctors kept a very close eye on things. Luck was with me, and the pregnancies were relatively smooth. (I'll gloss over the early labor and bed rest for weeks on end, as truly, who wants to revisit THAT?)

In October 2005, during a routine check up, a high blood pressure reading awoke suspicions. Blood work confirmed that my kidney function had started to ebb. I immediately went on a very low protein diet and started reading everything I could get my hands on about slowing down the progress of the disease. Reducing protein intake seems to be the most widely encouraged step that kidney-impaired patients can take, as processing proteins is very hard work for the kidneys. There is more ambiguity around caffeine intake -- my nephrologist believes that caffeine can encourage the cysts to grow, though the research is mixed -- but I've been almost-caffeine-free for years now, so that was not a difficult choice for me.

Since we starting monitoring in fall of 2005, my kidney function has dropped to about 40% and has remained steady for about 18 months, which is very encouraging. Most of the time I don't feel actively sick, but I have much less energy than I'm used to, and my immune system has pretty much crapped out on me. I've lost count of how many colds I've had this winter. My kidneys are hugely enlarged (about 17cm in length at last measure) and my latest scans show "innumerable cysts" in my liver as well. I can actually feel my liver through my abdominal wall, as it is hard and distended from all the cysts.

The conflation of enlarged organs in my abdominal cavity isn't leaving much room for anything else. The pressure on my bladder means that I'm in the bathroom with alarming frequency (you're welcome) and if I eat more than around 1 cup of food by volume at one sitting, my stomach is in misery from the surrounding pressure.

I expect that I will need dialysis or a new kidney within a 3-5 year time frame. I am incredibly lucky to have a brother of my blood type who is willing to be a donor (you'd be surprised how often that is not the case), so I'm in a much better position than many kidney patients.

What is fueling me these days is that our son Quin, who's about to turn 12, was (again, accidentally) diagnosed with PKD last winter. It's going to be a long time before he has any symptoms, but I'm determined to do everything I can to accelerate the research so that by the time it's an issue for Quin, there will be a treatment that arrests the progression of the disease.

Hence our involvement with the PKD Foundation, a terrific non-profit agency with dual missions of directly funding research and providing educational and advocacy services around the disease. Last summer with the help and support of a LOT of friends and family, Michael, the kids and I raised over $9,000 for the annual Walk for the Cure. We'll be active again this year, though probably not to the same extent.

Leading me to this question: as I develop my fundraising insanity marathon program for 2008, do you want to hear about it on this blog, or should I resurrect Cookies for a Cure and keep all the fundraising nonsense in one place? Tell me what you think, because it's all starting sooner than any of us realize...

Public Service Announcement the Second

Make sure your kids (if you have any) know what to do if their cheesy toast causes a toaster oven fire....

Garrick is very independent and self-directed when it comes to food. He is often to be found with his tushy sticking out of the pantry as he scrounges in its depths for some previously overlooked tidbit. He is a master snack-maker and he fixes himself breakfast virtually every morning (usually cinnamon toast or a bowl of cereal). This morning, he decided to place some cheddar cheese slices on his bread and place it under "broil" in the toaster oven.

If I had come downstairs 3 minutes later, he would have been dealing with a toaster fire on his 10-year-old ownsome.

After the smoke had cleared and the batteries had been removed from the smoke detectors, I asked him what he would have done if I hadn't been there. "I don't know." Hmmph. I reviewed the unplugging, the keeping-the-toaster-closed-to-starve-the-fire, and the difference between electrical fires and other kinds of fires. Then I cleaned out the toaster oven and dug out the little baking tray that came with it and put it within easy kid reach.

Then I started a Target list and put a new fire extinguisher at the top of it.

Cautious Optimism -- Boys, Avert Your Eyes

The new bra is still comfortable after 3 days of wear... it's a miracle!

The Fifth Circle of Hell

is trying to find a comfortable bra that fits. Luckily, my local Macy's is hip to this fact, and now stocks Godiva chocolate bars next to the cash register in the lingerie department.

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Well, at my house, hope is actually the thing with yellow feathery petals that smells, to me, like cat pee.

Spring's coming.