Italian Mama

I was just posting to my cousin Antonio's Facebook wall, and thinking about family and connections and celebrations.  Tonio's mother is my "Aunt Anne" who is really my mom's cousin, so we're second cousins but being Italian, we just say "cousins".  In our family, you wouldn't get introduced as, say "this is my mother's cousin's stepdaughter" which is who one of my "cousins" actually is!  When you're in, you're in.

It's funny, I'm only 1/4 Italian, which thins down to only 1/8 in Lauren's blood, but if you ask her what her cultural background is, she 'll proudly say "I'm Italian!" because it's the most fun part.   It's the side that throws big elaborate meals with her favorite cheeses and pestos and lots of laughter and grown-ups drinking wine and talking in big boisterous voices with lots of hand gestures.


Lauren's Nonna's Nonna came from Italy.  The family recipes we make the most are from that side.  My great-grandparents came here over 100 years ago but they're the most recent immigrants in our lineage.  We still have cousins that live in Parma,  we visit and correspond with them.  There is a town named after the family (or the family was named after the town, we're not sure!)  I've been there twice and I've been welcomed into their home both times.  Lauren longs to "go back".  (She was there in utero.)

We have food words we use from Parmigiana (the dialect my great-grandparents spoke).  We say "boo fa" which means to blow on something when it's too hot, and "poo cha" which means to dip the bread in the olive oil.  We have a song in Parmigiana that my grandmother used to rub my eyes and sing to me, about the rain.  I've never seen any of this written down.  I don't know how to spell the words.  Our traditional foods for the holidays are (to me) much more interesting than "American" fare.  Lasagna at Easter, not ham.  About 10 different kinds of antipasti.  And all of those desserts, would make my mouth water just to type about!

If you have an Italian mama, you never go hungry.  Italian mamas love to see chubby little babies and love to kiss cheeks.  I've got a lot of (especially male) grown up cousins who still live at home.  Or bring piles of laundry to their mamas on weekends.

I never thought I would turn into one, but now when I look at those little chubby cheeks and KISS them and KISS them, I think  "Lauren, William, you can still live with me when you're thirty, that's just fine!  Mangia!"

The tail end of summer: adventures thus far

We're more than halfway done with summer break, which seems crazy!  The reason it's so short this year is that LA Unified decided to move the start date to August 14th.  Last year they started the 2nd week of September.  So everyone has 3 weeks less of summer.  They say they're doing it to keep high school, middle school and elementary school on the same schedule, and they want high school to get out earlier so that students will have more time to prepare for national standardized tests-AP, SAT, etc.

What this has meant for us is a rather condensed summer.  Lauren spent the first week of it at Camp Nonna & Poppy, swimming and enjoying herself.  William and I were there for the first 2 days of that, then I came back to go to work, and she remained there the rest of the week. My parents drove her to a halfway point from their house in San Diego, we met in Orange County and drove her home.   She did not want to come back.

Then she had 3 weeks of STAR camp which she absolutely LOVED.  We decided to go car-free as much as possible and walk or bike to the school.  The trip there and back became one of our favorite parts of the day.  What a luxury, to be able to walk to school every morning!  (Instead of the 20 mile round-trip drive we do during the year!)  The campus was just over a mile away.  I wish it was our our home school, I would send her there in a heartbeat.

We signed her up for one week of "Supercamp", which was just the fun stuff, nothing academic, and 2 weeks of summer school-classes in the morning, fun stuff in the afternoon.  All 3 weeks at the same campus.  Every morning I would drop her off and watch her scamper over to her friends with excitement,  (Meanwhile, William was thrilled each morning to run over to a cage full of basketballs and kickballs, and try to shoot a basket, climb on the "big kid playground" and to try desperately to pass for a 5-year old so that he could join the camp, too!)

The 2nd week of camp, I dropped her off as usual and at pickup, I asked her what she learned at summer school.  "Oh, we didn't really do anything yet, probably they'll start the learning part tomorrow."  The next day, she went on and on about the science project they had done, and begging me to please enroll her in this school, which was so much fun, much more interesting than her school.  Third day, I asked her again what they had studied, and this time "I don't want to talk about that, Mommy!" and she told me instead all about the game of Capture the Flag, and the storytelling class and the nice kids she sat next to.  On Thursday, they went to an amusement park.

On Friday, we were running late so she missed circle time and the kids had already broken into groups and gone off to the classrooms.  One of the directors said "Oh, hi Lauren!  The Supercamp kids are over this way."  When I said "No, she's in Summer School", the woman got a funny look on her face.  I then realized why Lauren was having so much fun at "school"-she had been cutting class!  Turns out, they had been marking her absent at Summer School each day, and handwriting her name on the attendance sheet at Supercamp.  The camp staff was mortified when they figured out what happened, and they gave me a partial refund (because Summer School costs more).

Evidently, the first day, Lauren went to sit on the same bench she'd been sitting on the week before, and no one caught the mistake.  By the time she realized what happened, she also realized that if she could get away with it, it would be much more fun to stay where she was.  So, age 6, her first experience cutting class!

Con Artist in the Parking Lot of Vons

I was just the victim of a con artist at the Vons parking lot.  Boy, do I feel stupid!  

I pulled into the parking space with the kids in the car, to get some groceries.  Some guy in his early 20's was driving past (in an older white car)and rolled down his window and said "excuse me, ma'am, I couldn't help noticing your dent.  I work at a body shop and today's my day off.  I've got my tools in the trunk and I could fix that really easily."

I said "Okay, sure, give me your card and I'll think about it."

He then proceed to tell me that he was usually really busy working, today was his day off but that it would be easy for him to fix and he could do it for only $80.  He then jumped out of the car, got out some tools from the trunk and said he was going to show me how he could easily pull it out without taking the door off.  He introduced me to the people in the car, his father, sister and kids.  He said that it would only take a few minutes, then his father also got out and they started drilling a hole in the car!  :( 

I said "Hey, what are you doing?!"  I told him that I didn't have $80 and I hadn't told him to do that, and he said they said "you won't even see this when we're done, it just how we access it" and that I wouldn't have to pay them if I wasn't satisfied, and that there was an ATM nearby.  He was also going to give me his business card and his personal phone # in case I had any questions or problems.  I somehow got suckered into agreeing to pay $60 for it and he promised it would look good as new when they finished. 

Which I doubted, but felt afraid, because two guys with sledgehammers were now standing next to my now-damaged car and I was alone with my 2 children.  So I went to get the money and when I came back and went to pay them, he pretended we had agreed on $160, and wanted $100 more and started to get mad.  I told him my husband used to work for the DA and I could get him there to settle this!   Suddenly $60 was fine with him and he was in a hurry to leave.

I asked him why there was still a dent (which now had some white substance on it) and he went on and on about how they had filled the holes with matching clear coat which would not show, and  applied a special cream which would "pull out the dent"  after sitting on it for a few hours,  but was very toxic, so I shouldn't touch it or let the kids or any pets near it until it dried.  When it turned blue, it was done "curing" and I could wipe it off.Of course I didn't believe there was any substance that could do that, but I was also starting to be afraid of them.    And he had suddenly run out of business cards  but jotted down what was supposedly his name, "John" and #, on a piece of paper.  

So, they  "pulled" the previous dent but left another new one and 2 drilled holes, and they took $60 and made me feel threatened with my small children in my arms.

My husband is really mad at me for falling for this one but the whole thing started off innocently...it was the drilling holes in my car part that got me sucked in and afraid.  Yikes!  

I tried to call Pacific Division to report it, but couldn't get a live person on the phone.  Called our Senior Lead Officer on his cell phone and he said that since I had agreed to give them money (I did feel coerced, though!  Come on, someone standing next to you and your kids with a sledgehammer in their hands!) then it becomes a business transaction rather than a crime, that I would have to go in person to report it to the detectives in the West LA Fraud division.  I have a photo of the guy's back license plate, it was a white older model car, Buick maybe?

Yeah, I guess one day I will look back on this and laugh.  But right now I feel really sick to my stomach about it and it doesn't seem very funny!  Just wanted to  post this because I'm *usually* pretty street-wise (I tend toward my New Yorker attitude of being in a hurry and not even interacting at all with strangers in a parking lot let alone falling for this kind of thing.)  So anyway, be on the lookout and don't even engage with these kind of people and certainly don't get suckered by them!

Guest Post from Lauren: Ruckus Reader Event at Zimmer Children's Museum

On Sunday, I went to the Zimmer Museum.  I went in a room there was snacks in.  We met a girl named Lauryn (but she has a different way of spelling it!).  Lauryn showed me how to play the Ruckus Reader on an Ipad.  I liked about it, the My Little Pony game.  If I had an Ipad I would like to play it.  I colored with the Crayola color game.  It was cool!

Afterwards, I did a lot of other things.  I went in the play ambulance and the ball pit.  It was fun!  My favorite part about it was the boat that had balls around it, to represent water.

Upstairs there was a stage that was for dress-up.  There were mirrors and at the top of the mirrors there were words that said "today I would be".  I dressed up as a flower princess.

The airplane was cool!  I liked its wings.  I pretended to fly it.  I think it was a real airplane! But I think it was abandoned.

Lauryn's mom gave me a gift bag and some My Little Ponies!  I love getting gift bags, of course!  Thank you, Lauryn's mom!

(I am making a FUNNY face in this picture!)

I want to go back some day!
Love,
Lauren


Note from my mom:
If you go:

Zimmer Children's Museum

   Hours

• Sunday, 12:30–5:00 p.m.  
• Monday, closed
• Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m 
• Friday, 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.   
• Saturday, closed
  

  Admission

  $8 Adults
  $5 Children 2-17
  Children under 2, free
  Grandparents free on Tuesdays when accompanied by grandchild

Part 2 Adventures: Who Needs an Appendix Anyway?

So where was I?  Oh yes, my abdomen was hurting on the lower right side, I had a fever and chills and the pain finally got intense enough that I asked Ryan to drive me to the emergency room.  I changed into my oldest, most comfortable sweatshirt and sweatpants, topped off with a pink Snuggy, and we were off.  (If you know me, that's a sign that I'm really sick, I rarely ever wear sweatpants!)

When we had almost arrived at UCLA, I started feeling better, probably from the Tylenol kicking in.  I almost decided to go back home and see if it would go away.  What if it was nothing serious after all?  I could be wasting everyone's time.  Luckily I did go in.  The admit nurse told me that I probably had appendicitis and that she'd had hers out the month before and "it really wasn't so bad.  I was expecting it to be so much worse."

When I got back to the hospital bed and they did my vitals, my fever was up to 100.5.  They offered me morphine, which I declined.  The first doctor came and immediately prodded my ovaries.  They did not hurt (which could have been a sign of ectopic pregnancy, the other malady that presents with similar symptoms).  She told me that they would send me off for a CT scan to be sure of diagnosis, but it was likely appendicitis.  Then an older male doctor came and poked and prodded me some more and informed me "that is not your appendix" but that they would do an ultrasound.

My cell phone was not working and Ryan was out in the waiting room looking after the kids, but for some reason texts went through, so I texted my brother (see this old post about why I don't text) which was my only form of entertainment while waiting.  I had him call my parents to tell them what was going on.

Meanwhile, they did do the CT scan, but the last-minute surprise was that they had to inject me with radioactive dye, so I would not be able to breastfeed for 48 hours.  This ordinarily would have concerned me but I just looked at them with glassy eyes and said "you do what you have to do" and decided to just pump and dump later.

I pumped and dumped in the ER, which was awkward and painful.  But getting the dye-contrast CT was the right decision because the scans came back showing that I did indeed have appendicitis and needed immediate surgery.  I never saw the male doctor again, who had told me it was not my appendix, and they did not need to do the ultrasound.  Good thing for modern technology!

Next, they wheeled me upstairs to the surgery room where at the last minute everyone was in a tizzy because I was wearing contact lenses and still had my underwear on.  Once everything was off, they had me wear an oxygen mask and explained that when I woke up my throat would be sore because while I would be unconscious, they were going to put a tube down my throat to help me breath.  Then I had a last minute panic thinking that the anesthesia was not taking effect, and worrying that I would remain awake for the procedure.

Then, I woke up about 2 hours later in a private room, with a vague memory of having been in a recovery room and even having spoken with a nurse.  My throat hurt but other than that, I felt a lot better.  My ribs did feel like I'd been bear-hugged.  There were 3 incisions, covered with bandages.  2 along my bikini line and one coming out of my belly-button.  I was strapped to all kinds of heart monitors, IV machines and each leg was hooked up to a machine which would "massage" it by lifting it up and raising it while squeezing like a blood pressure cuff.

Whenever I had to get up to go to the bathroom, I had to get the nurse to unhook all of the apparati first.  I did not sleep very well because of the leg "massagers".  The nurse told me that "some people actually like them".  I can't imagine who would.  I did manage to get her to surreptitiously agree to turn them off for 1 hour so that I could catch a nap.

No one had been very clear on when I was going home because "it is up to the doctor" but I did not see any doctors again until about 10:00 a.m. the next day.  There was also some confusion as to my breakfast diet.  Originally they brought me jello and beef broth "for your liquid diet" but since I'm a vegetarian, I didn't want that.  And I wasn't told of any planned liquid diet so I think they had me mixed up with another room.  I ordered and ate oatmeal and toast.

When it came, I hadn't realized they were going to bring just oatmeal.  No cinnamon, raisins and brown sugar.  They were nice and went back to the kitchen for the other things, but told me next time I ordered, to think of anything I might like with the meal besides the word it said-i.e. dressing with a salad, mustard, mayo, salt, milk for coffee, etc. and to make sure to say all of the other words on the phone.  Weird.

Around 10:00 a team of doctors marched in and said that everything looked fine, and I could go home at noon.  One of them told me that the rib pain was because they had to inflate my abdomen with air, stretching my ribcage.  So, Ryan and William came (William's separation anxiety could be a whole other post!) and waited around with me, and around 1:00, the wheelchair escort finally arrived and we went home.  On the way out, they gave me discharge papers with prescriptions for pain medicine and a note telling me not to lift anything over 10 pounds for 4 weeks.

So that is the surgery story.  Moral is, if you are having lower right abdominal pain with fever (also supposed to present with nausea, I didn't have any so that threw them off initially) then go to the emergency room immediately.  Don't wait because it's very serious and life-threatening if it bursts but if you catch it early, it's not a huge deal, as you can see from the above.  Oh, I will never be a bikini model now but we can pretty much agree that was not going to happen before! ;)

Part 1: Adventure on the new Light Rail Expo Line

On Sunday we had an exciting adventure that ended with a hospital trip but started out innocently enough.  Lauren had been begging me to take her on a ride on the new Expo Line.  There's now a Culver City exit at Jefferson and La Cienega, only a few miles from our home, and we decided to finally visit the Science Center.   So I took the kids and the Maclaren and headed out on Sunday morning.

We drove over to the stop, parked in the large free parking lot (which was mostly empty), paid $1.50 x 2 for one-way tickets and hopped on the light rail.  (They leave "every 15 minutes or more often".)  Lauren's face lit up, she probably caught my excitement at mass public transit finally coming to the westside.

It was clean, fast, efficient, and nearly empty on a Sunday morning.  We got off at Expo Park/USC and landed directly across the street from the Science Center.

There is a beautiful rose garden in front and Lauren grabbed my phone and took this picture.  

Inside, it was a smorgasbord of science delights, so many exhibits and bright and shiny moving objects that the kids didn't know where to focus first.  It was a little bit hard running after William and when I bent down to put him back in his stroller, I thought I might have pulled a muscle.  It hurt near my hip.

The kids' favorite part was the Ecosystems exhibit, where there was an aquarium with a clear tunnel in the middle that they could walk through, while fish swam overhead.  Lauren also wanted to explore the gift shop but by then, but we'd promised Ryan to be home in time for lunch (note, they have a Cafe and a McDonald's) plus my hip/abdomen was hurting so much that I just wanted to urgently get home and off of my feet.

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
We left and caught a train back, drove home, and I had an agonizing 10 minutes waiting to turn right onto La Cienega into an endless stream of cars, which made the driving the longest portion of the trip.

Finally got home, went directly upstairs and into bed.  I had a 99 fever.  I put a heating pad on my abdomen, curled up into a fetal position and tried to rest but the pain got worse.  Finally around 4:00, I asked Ryan to take me to the emergency room...

(To be continued in Part 2)

  If You Go: 

Light Rail Expo Line Info:

• La Cienega Station is the westernmost station that's currently open.  Parking is free.
• Light Rail Tickets: $1.50 for ages 5 and up, per one-way segment (if you change lines, pay another $1.50) or $5 for an all-day pass.  Credit cards are accepted.
• Schedule: Trains run every 15 minutes or more frequently
  La Cienega Station
• Strollers and bikes are allowed on board 

•                 California Science Center Info:

•  Hours: Open daily 10-5
• Admission: FREE!  (Donation suggested) 

• 
  

Fun at the Skirball

In January, I took the kids to the Skirball Center on a Friday afternoon.  It was Lauren's 3rd time and Willie's first.  They had so much fun running around in the very photogenic garden outside that they would have been satisfied even if we hadn't gone in!









But once we did, we got assigned to the 3:00 group, were given time stickers, and we waited downstairs, where Willie tried to infiltrate the display's security system to smash some ancient pots and pans.

Once inside the exhibit, the animal sculptures made of recycled materials are fascinating!

They loved running around playing with the stuffed animals (2 of each, of course)

Their favorite part, by far, was sweeping the rubber fake poop.  I would post a photo of that, but it looks so realistic, it's the kind of thing that might really embarrass them someday, so you'll just have to go there to see for yourselves!  

If you go:

Noah's Ark at the Skirball

   Hours

• Tuesday–Friday, 12:00–5:00 p.m.  
• Saturday–Sunday, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
• Closed Mondays
  
  

  Admission

  $10 General

• $7 Seniors and Full-Time Students
• $5 Children 2–12
• Free to Members and Children under 2
• Free to all on Thursdays

Included with Museum admission

Disclosure: We were provided with free passes to get in this trip (thanks, MomsLA!), and we have also been there several previous times on Thursdays when it is always free.