Misadventures of Middle Age

Mr. Razor: I could do that.
Me: Hmm? Okay. Sure.
Mr. Razor: Stands up. Stretches.
Me: Oh no. No no no no no.
Mr. Razor: What? It can't be that hard.
Me: Good luck! I'm not driving you to the ER.
Mr. Razor: Grabs toes. Gets head, shoulders, and collarbone off the floor. See? Totally easy.
Me: Oh, you have got to be kidding me.
Mr. Razor: Oof. Errr, I'm just gonna sit on the couch now. And possibly for the next three days.

Nerdography

Two things:

1. I was my elementary school's National Geographic National Geography Bee champion in 1992. (I got stomped at the state competition, where some of the kids had coaches. I was like, "Should I have gotten a coach?" My parents were like, "No, we'd rather you had a childhood.")

2. My favorite freelance gig is for a local tour company that leads trips all over the world. A few months ago I wrote short historical overviews of countries from Mongolia to Montenegro for their website.

So when I saw this little beauty at Boomerangs, I knew it was coming home with me:



The fact that it cost $3 was just a bonus.

My husband was initially like, "You bought...a globe?" but warmed up when I told him I bought it because it featured post-WWII USSR borders and the French Indochina, two things that were only on maps together for nine years years (1945-1954), making the little globe an antique instead of a piece of junk. (I didn't know that off the top of my head, by the way. I had just finished histories of the Baltic states and the countries of Southeast Asia.)

Mr. Razor, whose geekery surpasses even mine, then wondered if it would be possible to pinpoint the exact year of the globe's manufacture by looking at the countries listed on it. And we were off!

DISCLAIMER: This research was conducted via Wikipedia by two people whose areas of expertise are Medieval British literature and systems engineering, respectively. We also know fuck-all about mapmaking, so if we've screwed this all up, please let us know how, in as much geeky detail as possible. (Note: I am not being sarcastic.)



French Indochina, from the days when one nation could show up in another and take over just by saying, "Do you have a flag?"



So between the World Wars, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were independent states for the first time in a few centuries and were trying to set up governments when WWII rolled around and they got stomped by the Nazis going one way and then stomped by the Communists again going the other way. So the fact that the Baltic area is within the USSR's borders means post-WWII.

(Side note: I wonder if globes were even produced during WWII? Did map makers reprint everything whenever another border shifted? Or were they like, "Eff you Hitler, I'm leaving Poland on there"?)

But you'll notice that Germany remains one country. People born after 1989 are like, "Duh, Germany is one country," but us oldsters remember that there used to be a country called "East Germany" that was full of spies and Olympic athletes on steroids. East Germany, or the German Democratic Republic, came into existence in 1949. So our date range was down to 4 years (1945-1949).



OK, I'ma speed up my (probably horrifying to actual historians) event summaries. Pakistan split from India in 1947. So: 1947-1949. I thought that was as close as we were going to get, but Mr. Razor pushed on.



Oh, hey, Israel! Declared independence in May 1948



And, finally, Korea is one country. South Korea came into existence in August 1948.

So, in theory, our little thrift shop globe was produced in the summer of 1948. Again, I have no idea if maps actually get changed that quickly. Enlighten me in the comments if you know!

All right: what have we learned? 1) The 1940s were a turbulent time for international borders and probably a very stressful era for map makers. 2) I am nerdier than everyone.

I Hope Nobody I Know Owns This Sweater

Sometimes I wonder what it's like to be an Anthropologie copywriter. I mean, I love overpriced faux-bohemia as much (okay, probably more) than the next girl, but they sell some crazy shit. Case in point:



Me: What the Jesus is this?
Leigh: Are those...BOOB FANS?
Me: To keep them cool, maybe?

It's called the "escalope bolero," which is French for "scallop" and not "boob fan," sadly, and if your bosom really needs aerating, it'll set you back $228. Yeah, you read that right: two hundred twenty-eight shiny American dollars. I hope they use some of that ridiculous profit margin to pay their poor copywriters.

An MBTA Story

Subtitled: Why I Occasionally Love Public Transit

After a beautiful day doing Bostonish things, I got on a Green Line D train to meet up with my husband in Needham. A woman politely moved her bag so I could sit down, and I was then sandwiched between her and two young women who were showing each other pictures on their smartphones and chatting. I had my headphones on, so the only thing I could tell about their conversation was that it wasn't in English.

Across the aisle from us were four adolescent boys at the stage where they need to take up as much space and be as loud possible lest the world forget they exist for ten seconds. I could hear every word of their conversation over my music. Two of them were talking about the ladies next to me. One of them decided that the best way to get their attention would be to mumble "ni hao" (Chinese for "hello." Thanks, Ni Hao, Kai-Lan!) in their general direction. The women didn't respond.

Over the course of the next two stops, the boys said "ni hao" at the women with varying degrees of volume and mockery, never actually making eye-contact with them. The ladies continued talking to each other and pointedly ignoring the guys. When the group of guys got up to get off the train, two of them waved at the women and said, "ni hao!" one more time.

One of the women, in accented but perfect English said, "If you're talking to us, we don't speak Chinese. We're speaking Spanish."

Procrastination is Awesome

More celiac fun facts delayed until tonight. Nap time being spent productively: watching Florence + The Machine concert videos.

Celiac Disease 101

The problem with Seasonal Affective Disorder is that even though I have the "crippling depression" part of it treated, the waning sunlight gives me other wacky brain hiccups that SSRIs don't touch. For example, during longer days I can plan a post in my head and write it later, but once Fall hits I'll plot a bit and then my brain will reset like a shaken Etch-a-Sketch, leaving me sitting there going, "wait, what?"

The solution to this is obviously to make myself write for real when I have the time rather than trying to do it in my head, but then I'm tired after a morning of, "Do you want cheese? Yes? Why are you crying? Now you don't want cheese? It's okay!" (Seriously, a toddler is basically just the most rapid-cycling bipolar person you'll ever meet) and when nap time rolls around, I usually feel entirely justified spending all of it on The Hairpin.

I'm told you can make new habits through repetition, though, so here I am typing away as Baby Razor sleeps.

I thought I'd explain a little bit about how celiac disease works, since most people (myself included, prior to two months ago) only know that it means that those who have it can't eat wheat. Keep in mind: I am not a scientist, and everything I'm about to tell you, I got from the internet. This is absolutely the dinner-party explanation. If you'd like to learn about celiac disease from people who didn't major in Medieval literature, you should go here or here. My version will have more swearing though.

Okay, so people with celiac disease cannot eat wheat, barley or rye; or any products made with wheat, barley, or rye; or any products made with byproducts or derivatives of wheat, barley, or rye; or any products grown near or processed with or near wheat, barley, or rye. Does that sound confusing? IT IS. Do you know how many things are made with/from wheat or barley? (Rye: not so much.) The short list includes soy sauce, malt vinegar, some sweeteners, vitamins, and most pre-packaged meals and snacks, Plus pasta, baked goods, bread, and, oh, absolutely anything that goes through a plant that also produces products containing wheat.

I thought that last one was just precautionary until Baby Razor got sick from eating black beans that were processed in a place that also processes wheat. I was like, "There's nothing in black beans but black beans!" and didn't check the label. Which leads to my second point about celiac disease: It is amazing at making everyone around the sufferer feel like an asshole. Despite tons of research and (we thought) careful checking, Baby Razor's mom, dad, grandparents on both sides, and aunt have all accidentally fed her gluten at least once. The only solution is to become completely obsessive-compulsive about reading labels or to grow all of your own food. And since my backyard is about twenty feet square, I've done the former.

So, why can't celiac patients eat wheat/barley/rye? It's because they contain a protein called gluten. People with celiac do not have an allergy or "sensitivity" to this protein--they have an autoimmune disorder. Here's the difference: with an allergy, your immune system identifies a foreign body as dangerous and attacks it. With an autoimmune disorder, your immune system attacks your own body. When people with celiac disease have gluten, the immune response attacks their small intestine, damaging it and keeping it from absorbing nutrients into the body.

In plain English, if you have undiagnosed celiac disease, you're malnourished no matter how healthy you eat, because your small intestine is fucked. No one used to worry about this possibility, though, because doctors thought celiac disease was super-duper rare and people who had it all had really obvious symptoms. In fact, until the last decade or so, med students were told they'd probably only see one case of celiac in their entire careers, so you know they didn't pay much attention to that section of the book.

Yeah, it turns out that's entirely wrong. This fact sheet lays out the many, many ways in which it's entirely wrong. I'll just give you one of the pull quotes: "Celiac disease affects 1% of healthy, average Americans. That means at least 3 million people in our country are living with celiac disease—97% of them are undiagnosed." That's 2.9 million people walking around, thinking they're all good, when really they have an untreated autoimmune disorder that can lead to osteoporosis and higher rates of some kinds of cancer. That is fucking crazy! I still haven't gotten over how crazy that is.

Sweet Jesus, this got long. I think stop here and do a second part tomorrow. Coming up: Diagnosis! Treatment! How to deal with insensitive assholes! Poignant anecdotes about my baby! More swearing!

That fine line between genius and madness

I just read that today is Shel Silverstein's birthday, so I thought today was as good a day as any to tell my Shel Silverstein story.

Shel Silverstein had a house on Martha's Vineyard, and we used to see him around when I was in high school. We did not talk to him (although we would totally peek over his shoulder when he was doodling on napkins at the coffee shop), because even though he was a beloved author of our childhood, he looked like this:



and we were mildly terrified of him. He also sometimes talked to himself, walked everywhere, and never wore shoes.

So one day my dad and I were driving to Oak Bluffs, and we passed him walking along the bike path. I pointed him out and said, "That's Shel Silverstein. He's a famous children's author."

Dad looks over and says, "Famous? Huh. I thought he was a hobo."

Oh, hello!

(That's totally me, with gluten as the supervillain.)

Yesterday, a friend on Facebook recommended my blog to someone, and it was like she'd complimented my home decorating when I knew there was a bra on the couch, 67 toys on the floor, and a cobweb with a big, dead spider in the middle sitting up near the ceiling.

Not that my living room has ever looked like that, of course.

Except it was worse, because no one can see my sensible undergarments unless I let them in the house, but all y'all can see that I haven't updated here in three damn months.

Basically, Baby Razor got sick. And it was that kind of sick where she was probably okay? But we had to watch her. So I watched her fail to gain weight for three months, then start throwing up every other day for two terrifying weeks before our doctor's appointment, during which Baby Razor's doctor was like, "Okay, the mood is very Eeyore in here." And God bless her for having a sense of humor about it, because Mr. Razor and I have an unspoken agreement that one of us needs to be the strong one when the other one is freaking out, but that went right out the window the night I was like, "I'm really worried" and he was like, "Oh shit, I can see her hipbones."

The short version is that Baby Razor has celiac disease. The longer version is that Baby R's doctor is awesome (and I don't just say that because I've known her for 15 years), Children's Hospital Boston is efficient and caring but still scary as hell, and wheat is in FUCKING EVERYTHING. The really long version involves a lot of hyperventilating and stress-eating, so I'll skip that one.

Maybe surprisingly, I'm not sad or freaked out by the diagnosis; I'm grateful. Look: I'm pretty sure there is no human body on earth that runs perfectly. Mine likes to panic and randomly throw blood clots. My father-in-law's tries to kill him whenever he's within three feet of shrimp. So Baby Razor's thinks wheat and barley can suck it; that's totally okay. I'm just glad we know! For awhile there I was terrified that I was going to end up on Mystery Diagnosis, wearing a sensible cardigan and saying, "At that point, we thought she was going to weigh 20 pounds for the rest of her natural life."

We're still figuring out her diet (seriously, gluten sneaks into every. damn. thing.), but she's gaining weight, and she has enough energy to power my neighborhood. Which means I can let go of some of the mental energy I've been devoting to her digestive tract and go back to telling stories about things like trying to make mom-friends when I'm naturally anti-social, my latest crafting disaster, and random shit I find at the thrift shop. Watch this space!

American Picker

Hey, look what I found in the trash!


Well, sort of. It was sitting on the sidewalk across the street with the trash, but I choose to believe the fact that it wasn't in a trash bag was a sign that whoever put it out there wanted someone to adopt it and love it.



I thought it was a hat box and was going to use it to store some of Baby Razor's increasingly out of control toy collection, but no: it's a vintage American Tourister hard-shell suitcase, exactly like this one on sale at Etsy. It's a little dirty, and the inside smells like grandma, but I think I can clean it up and use it for something cool. Heck, I can even use it as god intended: as the world's most badass carry-on.


I almost didn't grab it. Partly because, while I am an experienced curb shopper, it feels weird to do it in suburbia where everyone can look out their window and see you taking someone else's trash. And partly because I now have a nagging voice in the back of my head going beeeeeeedbuuuuuuuugs. Stupid bedbugs.

But my armchair is next to the front window, and the suitcase was right in my line of vision this morning, calling to me. You know they crush garbage, right? it said. I'm just saying. That'll be on you. Yeah, for some reason vintage luggage sounds a lot like my mother.

Why was it out there? Well, there have been a lot of people stopping by the house across the street this week, poking around and cleaning, so I'm choosing to believe that the elderly woman who lived there went to an assisted living facility. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.


So, does anyone have tips on getting old-lady smell out of fabric? Or cleaning hard luggage (I'm guessing just scrub the crap out of it with soap & water. It looks built to withstand a nuclear bomb, after all.) And can anyone tell me what this mark, to the right of the American Tourister logo, is:

Monogram? Business name? Other?

Where Have You Gone, Man in the Yellow Hat?

Curious George & Friends opened in 1995 as Curious George Goes to Wordsworth. The name changed when Wordsworth went out of business in 2004. I started shopping there in 1996, when I was 18 and my niece was two. Now my niece is 17, my daughter is two, and Curious George is closing.


They were closed yesterday when I went to pay my respects (and do some discount shopping).


All the bare shelves used to be so packed with books that you'd have to wiggle them back in after you were done looking at them. That book you loved when you were a kid, whose name you forgot even though you could still describe the cover? They had it.


I never minded paying full price for books & toys there (instead of less at the big box stores) because I knew everything in Curious George was chosen with love and care. I will admit that I felt a little bad about being the aunt who gave two gifts instead of six, though.

But even at full price, I imagine they'd have to sell more books than anyone buys to continue to afford the $15,000 a month rent.

I'm heartbroken, and I felt a little silly about it because as my mom loves saying, it's not like somebody died. But as I was taking pictures through the windows yesterday, three separate people came up to the door, read the sign, and said, "Oh, no." At least I'm not alone.

[Totally Selfish Side Note: Does anyone know what happens to the store's decorations? Because I would shank my neighbors for a chance at George in the rocket ship.]