Kathryn

Flood Washington with Relief

December 8, 2007 by Kathryn

It wasn’t until I sat down to beg you all for help that the severity of what’s going on in the flood zones really hit me and I started bawling. If you want to understand why, go watch this video from the Lewis County Chronicle website. I really need your help everybody.

I spent yesterday demolishing a single mother’s home in hopes of saving it. The main floor of her small house was filled with muddy contaminated water during this week’s record-breaking flood in western Washington. Apparently the water rose so fast that she and her 3 children were unable to get home and move their belongings from the main floor to safety.

4 days later while my 4 girlfriends and I were tearing the sheetrock and insulation from the walls of her home with hammers and shovels, she was still hauling her filthy belongings to temporary housing in garbage bags. A few of her children’s homemade Christmas decorations still clung to the higher walls.

Over 1600 homes were flooded in this disaster, the majority of which have no flood insurance. Businesses have been wiped out. As sad as it was to see Wal-Mart under water and Home Depot condemned, the hardest thing is to know that many small businesses may never recover. So even as their homes are destroyed, their livelihoods may be cut off as well, right at the busiest time of the year for many businesses.

One of my friends kept asking the disaster relief workers what the people would do now that their homes and belongings had been destroyed. Several families are walking away from homes and businesses with no idea what they will do next. The fact that Christmas is almost upon us is the least of their worries.

It was incredibly humbling to drive past homes and farms that had been completely submerged, some blasted by 14 feet of filthy water. Farms that have been handed down for generations are destroyed, their owners left with nothing. Some had to shoot their own livestock so they wouldn’t suffer while drowning. There are cars and farming equipment still under water or stuck in mud and much of it is completely unusable. We saw toys, clothes and furniture several feet up in trees. People are in shock. One elderly woman was found sitting alone in her mud-drenched home staring straight ahead, unable to move. It’s a daunting task and several hours of hard labor yield negligible results. It’s hard not to be discouraged by the slow pace of the progress.

One of the hardest hit areas is in Lewis county around Chehalis, a couple of hours south of where we live in the Seattle suburbs. My good friend grew up in Chehalis and her father is still a dentist and farmer in that area who, as a volunteer LDS church leader, is helping head up relief efforts. Taking few breaks to eat or rest, he has spent the past several days driving from home to home assessing needs, helping with cleanup, distributing donations and organizing hundreds of volunteers.

Several local churches of various faiths have been turned into shelters and clothing and food distribution centers. People are coming from all over the US to serve and help with cleanup. The main non-denominational relief organizations serving the area are the United Way and the Red Cross and they are doing amazing work.

I sent out an email to the women of my congregation asking for clothing, food and tool donations and within hours, we had a garage full of supplies which Dan drove down early this morning on his way to help with cleanup. When I got home from Chehalis last night, I talked to my neighbors about what I’d seen and they came up with 3 boxes of helpful donations.

Do you live nearby? Would you like to help with cleanup or reconstruction? Do you live far away? Would you like to help these people put their lives back together? Each year at Christmas we try to find someone in need who we can serve, something we should actually be doing all year long. This year the choice seems obvious for us. I can’t remember a time when I felt more blessed and more of an urge to give everything I can to help someone else. Even Laylee has gathered a mountain of clothes, toys and blankets in her room to take to the “flood people.”

I’m gathering monetary donations which I will use to purchase gift cards to Home Depot and other local businesses with much-needed supplies. We will drive these cards down to Lewis County and, with the direction of local relief workers, give them to the flood victims to meet their immediate needs. Personally, I believe that people are capable of reaching out and helping each other directly.

Obviously I am not a registered charity so I do not have a Tax ID to give you a receipt for deductions. However, if you have $2 or $2000 that you’d like to go directly to people in dire need this Christmas, and you trust me to get it to them, I know that together we can do a lot of good. If you’re more comfortable going the traditional route, please consider making a donation through The Red Cross or The United Way.

If you’d like to help me give directly to victims, please click here to send money via PayPal.

All money that comes into my account for the rest of the year will go 100% to help rebuild the hardest hit areas of Washington. The people are cold, they’re wet and they need our help and prayers.

If you have a blog, please pass this information along to your readers. You can lift the graphic from the top and any photos from this post and post a link back to this entry. Email me if you have any questions and please help these people any way you can. Imagine what it would be like to lose everything all at once with little or no warning. THANK YOU!

The Ho Ho Ho Guy

December 7, 2007 by Kathryn

What do you think about Santa? Carrie wrote a great post about him at Seattle Mom Blogs. My friends talk about him a lot and goodness knows Laylee can’t say enough about him.

I’m talking about him over at Parenting today and I’d love to have your opinion.

Miffy Winner

December 6, 2007 by Kathryn

We have a winner for the big fat giant mother of a Miffy.

And the prize goes to Veronica Mitchell from one of my favorite recent blog finds Toddled Dredge. She says it’s for her 4-year-old but I have my doubts about that.

Water Torture is for Sissies

December 5, 2007 by Kathryn

If you really want to wreak havoc with your mortal enemies’ psyches, pump their house full of rabid fruit flies that have no identifiable nesting ground or food source.

The flies will billow in clouds around their heads driving them to:

-flail their arms around spasmodically
-clap loudly at random times
-hit themselves
-scream at invisible flying specs of annoyance
-repeatedly peek into bowls of apple cider vinegar laced with dish soap and cackle with self-satisfaction
-LOSE THEIR MINDS!!!!!

More Thoughts on the ER

December 4, 2007 by Kathryn

Well after reading your comments today, I checked back into the “male nurse” fiasco and discovered that he is actually a Nurse Practitioner so I feel a little sheepish. I feel much more calm after letting it sit for another 24 hours. Do you ever go back and read a blog post and think, “Wow. I was really worked up about that yesterday. Hmph. Oh well.”? I do.

As a side note though, do you call a nurse practitioner a “doctor” because that’s what she called him? I should also point out that the ER was clean and everyone treated us very nicely when they weren’t ignoring us for hours at a time. Several of you also mentioned that you ARE the ones mostly responsible for your children’s health care. I’m also the main caregiver for my children. I just resent that the assumption was made, to the extent that they left Dan completely out of the conversation.

Gender Roles in the ER

December 3, 2007 by Kathryn

On Sunday Laylee was in agony-induced meltdown mode over a sore neck which got more and more stiff as the day wore on. By noon she was unable to turn her head at all and sobbing every time we moved her an inch. Worried that the stiff neck might be indicative of the big scary M-word and unsure whether or not she had a fever as she’d been wearing a huge parka all day, we decided to take her in to Urgent Care on the way home from church. We called ahead and they said that we should take her straight to the ER.

I guess the urgent care doesn’t mess around with sudden onset neck pain in young children.

So we settled in for a nice long wait in an ER exam room full of sharps containers and other biohazards. Magoo was in heaven. Laylee laid perfectly still in the hospital bed while Dan spun Magoo on the wheely chair and sang hundreds of verses of Down By the Bay. I offered moral support, relieved Dan’s strained singing voice with my MP3-playing phone and occasionally threw peanuts at the children.

After an hour of waiting, we had a short visit from a female nurse who told us the doctor would be in shortly. The ER was fairly quiet besides the muffled conversations of the staff who seemed to be in no kind of hurry at all.

After our second hour of waiting, I commented on the lack of carnage I’d seen and told Dan that this hospital was nothing like the ones on ER or Grey’s Anatomy. Magoo commented on GOOOO HOOOME NOW AAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!

Dan said that for all we knew it was exactly like the TV drama hospitals and the reason we were waiting so long to see a doctor was because they were all in supply closets somewhere making out. He had a good point.

Eventually a man wearing a lab coat came in and briefly examined Laylee without introducing himself. He diagnosed her with Wry Neck or a sudden unexplained neck pain. Nice. I probably could have called that one. He prescribed an ice pack and children’s Motrin, which was then administered by a nurse. I wonder how much it costs to have your Motrin administered by a nurse in the ER as a cure for Wry Neck. Hopefully I’ll never find out.

There were a couple of strange things about our visit that the feminist in me cannot let go. First, the hospital staff went out of their way to ignore Dan’s presence in the room and only make eye contact with and speak directly to me. Never mind that he’s her father, that he was the one who’d been taking care of her all day, the one who had checked her in at the front desk while I was parking the car or that my hands were full when they brought in her release papers to be signed. They stepped right past Dan and handed me the clipboard, turning their back to him and explaining everything to the mother. I’m not normally sensitive to this kind of thing but it was really obvious.

Obviously as the mother and nurturer, I am the only one who can understand how to squeeze a dropper of Ibuprofen into her mouth. I mean if fathers could do that, then we might expect them to start periodically changing diapers and eventually women might begin to feel superior and demand the right to vote or something.

Secondly, when we looked over her release papers, we saw that the “doctor” they’d sent in was really a male nurse. So it seems that the female nurse had looked at Laylee, determined that calling a doctor was unnecessary, but hoped we wouldn’t ask questions when she called in a man in uniform, told us a doctor was on his way and sent in a male nurse wearing a lab coat.

Now it’s possible that all the doctors and interns were “busy” “getting” “supplies” and since she was fairly sure that nothing was wrong, she called in the senior grand poobah nurse (who happened to be male) and asked him to come have a look. It just looked fishy, especially in an ER where caring for children is considered solely women’s work.

Ty’s Toy Giveaway — AKA — This is About a Giant Miffy

December 3, 2007 by Kathryn

When I got a message in my inbox with the subject line — Re: This is About a Giant Miffy — my first thought was that it was a creatively euphemized inappropriate spam email. Then I noticed it came from my beloved Mir so I decided to keep reading about this here Giant Miffy. Here’s the deal:

Ty’s Toybox is giving away some Giant Miffy dolls. They are over 2 feet tall and appear to be even bigger around than “your mother” which is pretty big because I’ve heard she’s got a few pounds to lose. (Was that a good “your mother” joke? I’m trying to be “down” with all the “slang”, my little marshmallow “peeps”.)

If you’d like to win this fabulous prize of amazing proportions (and you know that even if you don’t, your little person REALLY REALLY does) head over to Ty’s and browse until you find whatever your child would choose second after they got their favorite possible toy, a huge giant stuffed Miffy.

Then, if you live in the continental US, come back and leave a comment about the second place treasure and you’ll be entered to win. The contest closes at 11:59pm PST on Wednesday, December 5th. I’ll do a random drawing and you’ll get your giant box-that-dreams-are-made-of in the mail.

Everybody gets automatic free shipping at Ty’s on domestic orders over $65 and you can use the coupon code HOLIDAY5 to get $5 off a $50 order.

In the past I haven’t done many of the giveaways that have been sent my way but how could I resist the chance to write a post with “GIANT MIFFY” in the title? Seriously. Oh, and I get one too, to give to “your mother.” (Got you again. Wow, I am really on a roll with that one.)

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Smells Like December

December 2, 2007 by Kathryn

I’m starting to sense that it may be December. This sensation is apropos and in regards to the following significant significations:

1. Magoo will not stop with the “jiggy bells.” Yep. He really calls them that.

2. When we breathe out through our mouths, it makes all kinds of crazy “foagk.” So we breathe out a lot and not so much of the in until our lungs nearly explode and we pass out on the sidewalk on the way to the civic tree lighting festival, the festival in which they plug in 3 strands of lights on a giant tree the shape of a pickle. We always cover our eyes to avoid getting the “foagk” in them and so that our landing place will be a surprise when we pass out on the way to the CTLF.

BEWARE THE FOAGK (This is coming from my mouth as I take the picture. Notice Magoo's amazement.)

3. December 1st dawned with the promise that Seattle may indeed see a white Christmas this year… with a touch of green peeking out from underneath.

This may be the closest we'll get to a white Christmas. Hurry and taste the snow kids before it melts!

4. My craft projects have finally found willing muffin-headed recipients.

5. It smells like my BIRTHDAY!!! Growing up, I always knew my birthday was coming when I could smell winter in the air. This got a little annoying to my parents as it begins to smell like winter sometime in late August up in Alberta. Down here my olfactory timing device is a little more accurate. Ere the year is over I will reach the ripe old age of 29. Condolence gifts and donations of Centrum Silver can be sent via mail.

The Reasons: a Santa who arrives on a fire engine, mittened hands eating sugar cookies, husbands who make dinner and do all the dishes so their wives can crochet

Going Crazy

November 30, 2007 by Kathryn

Things are pretty crazy here and there’s no real reason why. I need to do some shifting and reorganizing and maybe think about exercising a teensy bit of self control and time management. Maybe I need the Fly Lady. Maybe I need Lara. (Does anyone know what’s happened to the Lazy Organizer? Her site’s down all the time.) Maybe I just need to go to bed.[read more at parenting.com]

Christmas Tree Rulz

November 30, 2007 by Kathryn

Tonight Laylee educated me in the ways of childish yuletide arbor dressing. Gah! I adore her.

1. Pull each ornament from the crumpled newspaper. Gasp and squeal because of the sheer beauty of it all.

2. Ornaments get lonely if they’re spread out all over the tree. Each ornament must be touching at least 3 others or “that’s just mean.”

3. You must group them according to color and style. Reds like reds. Candy canes like other candy canes. Shiny disco-like balls like other shiny disco-like balls.

4. Ornaments that like each other should touch… else the sadness.

5. Pretty little girls should be the ones to hang all the pretty little ornaments on the tree.

6. Little boys get nothing.

7. If it’s Dad’s job to put the star on the top of the tree, that means that it’s his job to hold the pretty little girl while she puts the pretty little star on the tree. It’s common sense really.

8. The prettiest ornaments should be well hidden within the centermost branches of the tree “so they can be private.”

9. Glass is better.

10. Magoo did it.

11. Place several of the best ornaments at floor level so that the “mice and bugs” have something festive to look at. Make your mother feel fabulous about her housekeeping abilities.

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