Fordham Miller Fare

message in a bottle?

this morning, i discovered my email had been hacked.  someone had actually obtained my password, and sent out a message to everyone in my address book (and if you use gmail, you know i mean EVERYONE) advertising an apparently oddly legitimate wholesale electronics website.  luckily it happened when i was at my computer, so i was able to send out an apology to my entire address book just minutes later.

what a drag, thought i.  i changed all the appropriate passwords and security questions (oh, those damn security questions.  does anybody who is over the age of 5 really have a favorite color?  that doesn't change?  even today, i forgot my passoword to typepad, and couldn't remember how i had TYPED the answer to my security question.  augh!).  creepy.  i hoped nothing else ill would come of it.

and then the nice thing happened.  all these people that i love responded to my email.  people i haven't talked to for...in some cases, years!  i'm not sure what the metaphor is....echo?  feedback loop?  maybe a boomerang, that you thought was just a frisbee.  now, to return a few of those emails....

head lice. they're not just for kids anymore.

that's right.  after getting ready to declare madeleine yet again free of the creepy crawlies (ha!), i came down with them myself.

the good news?  that after the third go around, i purchase a product called Resultz i found on the internet.  it has been approved in Canada, but not here, but was easily (although somewhat expensively) purchased through the internet.  i used it most recently to treat madeleine, and was delighted with the fact that (1) it is not a neurtoxin, and one needn't call poison control should it get into one's eyes, and (2) it does not require the massively labor intensive approach of the cetaphil program.  the active ingredient is apparently found in everyday cosmetics, including lipstick, which can either make you say, 'a delousing agent?  in my lipstick?' or 'thank god there's something you can just pour on your head and wash off without major risk of chemical exposure.

i won't bore you with the details - oh, okay i will.  it works by dissolving the waxy coating on the lice, thereby dehydrating them.  think of it as a kind of citrasolve for the insect world.  saturate the hair from roots to tip, wait ten minutes, and shampoo out.  it is a pretty oily substance, so my experience has taught me that at least two if not three shampoos in a row are necessary to get the hair really clean again.

my googling shenanigans have earned me enough of a reputation that i ended up selling a bottle of the beloved lotion to a friend in the late evening hours.  thankfully i thought to re-order - just in case.  here's hoping this stuff does the trick.  if not, i'll be emulating twiggy for my next haircut.

threat levels

biocontaminants: code yellow.

pestilent life forms: code orange.

chemical hazards: code green.

upon entering the domicile, please report any sore throat symptoms to the nurse on duty, reporting any allergies to medication, especially antibiotics, at that time.  kindly hand over your toothpaste, toothbrush, and dental floss, as well as any other dental appliances.  these shall be returned to you after a run through the sanitization cycle, but only on an as needed basis.  abandoned dental aids will be triple-bagged and sent to the incinerator.

please report any itching of the scalp to the nurse on duty.  surrender any hairbrushes, combs, headbands, pony tail holders, and stuffed animals.  these will be subject to appropriate sanitization procedures, and returned on an as needed basis.  hair checks will be conducted on an erractic enough schedule to ensure the survival of at least one reproducing adult.  therefore, please be prepared to repeat this process in 6-8 weeks.

there are currently no active chemical hazards, so you are free to enter and depart rooms as you please.  however, in the event of an unanticipated release of mercury, you will be asked to vacate the premises immediately until proper mercury cleanup protocol can be accomplished.

your patience is appreciated.

winning the battles. losing the war.

lice.

we successfully avoided them for 8 years.  then in september it started.  the 3rd day of school i found lice on both kids.  so i treated.  and combed.  and washed the sheets.  and banished the stuffed animals.  and combed.  and retreated.  and then we were done.

i initially treated with the over-the-counter formula - fun with neurotoxins! - but after my usual googling i decided that for all forthcoming treatments i would go with the decidedly less toxic nuvo protocol.  it goes like this: wash hair.  dry hair. apply 16 ounces of cetaphil gentle face cleanser to hair.  comb excess cetaphil cleanser out of hair.  blow dry hair.  all in all, it takes about an hour and a half to do maddy, about half that time to do morgan.

then, mid-way through november, maddy reminded me to check her hair, because lice had been recently identified in class again.  and right off the bat i found one.  augh!  so, i treated, and retreated, and combed, and examined.  this time around, not so many, and morgan didn't get it, and by the day before thanksgiving, i declared us yet again, lice free!  i swear, two months ago we were lice free.

tonight, maddy complained of her head itching.  she has a recent scar on her scalp from a bad fall she took (4 staples) so i thought maybe that was it.  but the scar also happens to be where the critters like to hang out most.  i couldn't find any of the critters themselves, but i found one egg, and then another.  at first i thought they were old stragglers from the earlier bouts. but then i found another.  and another.  and you know, where there's smoke....

so tomorrow i am in for it again.  washing, drying, shampooing, combing, blah blah blah.  i'm just praying nobody else gets 'em (so far it hasn't happened, but...knock on wood).

bill or ben? you decide

my previous post -- which revealed how my celebrity crushes tend toward my husband's general features (a good sign i would think) -- got me remembering how, while watching angels in america, i discovered bill's doppleganger, ben shenkman.  the resemblence is so uncanny, bill has since refused to watch any shenkman film, seeing how he is without recall of that particular part of his career.  to prove the point, i've assembled these twelve images, and challenge you to answer the question, "bill or ben?"  (without resorting to google images, please).  and if this is bill's doppleganger, which one of them is good, and which one of them is evil. hmmmmm....

music, reality tv, fan crushes, scientology, and the difficulty of getting one's point across

so the whole thing starts like this.  i watched about three episodes of Rock Star: INXS while folding laundry (bill: you really watch a lot of crappy tv; me: i fold a lot of laundry).  morbid curiousity, i suppose, added to curiousity about how the performers would sound, being that they were aiming to getting a pretty huge push into stardom.

so i watched the show for a couple of episodes, and took in the finale where they chose the winner.  but something bothered me about it the whole time.  arguably just my elitist attitudes, but i got this embarrassed feeling when i watched the interaction between the performers and the crowd, like there just wasn't an authentic nano-second happening there.  and i didn't watch the show to come down on it, i was actually LOOKING for that authentic nano-second, that chance to root right along with everybody else.

then, i caught an episode of Austin City Limits with Beck, who i only know from "loser" and "where it's at," and i remembered him being sort of "anti-folk music" when "loser" came out, which bothered me, so i never really checked him out any further.  he opened his ACL set with about 4 acoustic numbers, and i was blown away.  bill and i later checked out the whole show, and talked about why we think beck might be a genius, and what genius means, and what it was that qualified him for that descriptor.  bill decided that it was his ability to move so fluidly and with such competence between genres.  i decided that i am always hopelessly behind the times, and went to check out more on beck on ye olde internet.

at which point i discovered: beck is a scientologist.  which at the moment i read it meant nothing to me, because yes i know about tom cruise and john travolta and yada yada yada, but i didn't really know anything about what these people actually practice and believe.  and while my sampling of the internet may not have been completely balanced, i came away with the impression that scientology is a mind-controlling cult of loony toons.  oh boy, i hope i'm not offending anybody i know or anybody who reads this, but lets just say for the sake of argument that it IS a cult of mind-controlling loony toons because that had this weird effect on how i felt about this newly (ha ha) discovered talent.

when i was watching beck on austin city limits, i got kind of a little teeny celebrity crush on him, which is apt to happen with singers because, you know, because...they're singers/musicians and there's some...thing there.  and you might know how you hate it when you get a crush on a celebrity and then you find out that they suck in some way or another?  yeah, it was like that, only weirder.  i tried to explain it to bill, how SAD it was that beck was in this crazy cult because....because...but i couldn't explain it.  it was sort of like, here could be this amazing interesting person who i could grow to appreciate, and look forward to hearing some interview with him, and it would enlighten me to something otherworldly, except that wasn't gonna happen cuz of..you know, the scientology thing.

not very articulate, right.  okay sure, BUT WAIT.  i came across this woman's essay (link below), and it really summed up everything i was feeling, and i urge you to read it because it's much more articulate than i am and it gets to the heart of something i was thinking but just couldn't express, and if you read it you will know just that much more about me and my quiet little TiVo watching soul....

http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/04.13.05/beck-0515.html