Off to college

My youngest daughter just packed a cut-out of Bill Hader in the car to take to her sophomore year of college in San Marcos, Texas. #Essentials. 

This past week a picture of my oldest daughter moving into Trinity University in 2006 came up in social media memories. What a journey it’s all been. There was also the middle daughter who started out as a marine biology major at Texas A&M. Kids are such an adventure. 

Tomorrow I’ll be an empty nester, again. With Zoë, the youngest, less than an hour away, and in a pandemic, she was often back home last year for her freshman year, what with holidays and of course the summer. So my empty nestering was only for a few weeks at a time. All that build up last summer….the last one gone…you’re gonna feel so….(free, lonely?)….and then she was home for Labor Day LOL, and many times after that. Honestly, I saw her just as much in high school as her first year of college. In high school (pre winter 2020 semester of course) she was busy. School, theater, friends, all the time she spent in her room. ;) I hardly ever saw her except when she needed a ride. We spent a lot of car time together talking about our lives, though. 

I’m hoping that her sophomore year is much better than her freshman COVID year was. Most of that was spent on her bed in her dorm room, Zooming. A theater major, doing virtual school. When we look back at this, we know it’s gonna look ridiculous.  But what else could we do?  

Tomorrow we drive from San Antonio to San Marcos. It used to be a 40 minute trip back when I lived there. These days it can be an hour, 2….3 even. More precious car time. We’ve got the whole day to make the trip. The car is all packed. We are about to watch some dumb sitcom and eat popcorn. Zoë will probably come up with a reason to make me listen to some Elton John. So many reasons to live. #love

Monday morning I’ll jump back into my work life, which always keeps me busy, and I’ll think about what an adventure Zoë is embarking on. Her life just starting with so many cool experiences before her. I remember being 19 with endless possibilities stretching out into the future. My oldest child traveled to Florida to be a journalist after college and the middle child lit up stages in California and Connecticut. 

I can’t wait to see what this one will do. 

Life is good. 

I can’t ever give blood

Blame Mad Cow Disease. 

I was 22 years old when I moved to England in 1988 and little did I know that because of the 3 years I would spend there, I would never be able to donate blood in my lifetime. 

I’m not sure if I ever gave blood in the few years I would have been eligible to do so prior to the “Mad Cow” prohibition. I think I might have. But I had a lot of needles in my veins over 14 childbearing years with persistent gestational diabetes and the subsequent “pre”-diabetes. I may just be remembering those many, many vials of blood. 

The first memory I have of problems donating blood was in 1999. They asked me if I’d ever been to England and I said yes, so they asked me to “come back later.” They weren’t sure when would be a good time. They did say it had something to do with mad cow disease, which didn’t freak me out at the time as much as I think it should have. I was young then and felt indestructible, of course.

The next memory I have is from 2002, soon after I had my daughter, Zoe, at a blood drive in San Antonio, Texas for my employer. They gave me a questionnaire to fill out and one of the questions it asked was if I had lived in the UK between 1980-1996. (Later the questionnaires would narrow it to having lived 6 months or longer in the UK.) My answer was yes - right in the thick of that - 1988-1991. And so I was told definitively that I was not allowed to donate because of the risk of mad cow disease. 

I tried to donate a few times after that over the years, but the answer has never changed. Once I was touring a blood bank as part of a leadership group and they said I’d probably never be able to donate blood because the restrictions were permanent. 

Of course I’ve researched this mad cow disease, but I have to say that I’ve ever really been alarmed. My oldest child has researched too, as she is also prohibited. I remember her telling me once that we will probably both (and her dad) die of mad cow dementia, because the effects take a long time to manifest. But she also, doesn’t seem too worried. 232 people have died of it, since 1980. Is that that bad? 🧐

We didn’t eat a lot of British beef while we lived in England. Not because we were worried about Mad Cow Disease, although I do remember reading about it at the time. People were a little freaked out, not because of its effect on people though, but because of all the horrible sad cow deaths. Poor cows. That’s all that story was at the time, at least from what I remember. Otherwise I’d have had a better reason to refuse to eat at Wimpy’s Burgers when we were traveling than that it was kind of gross (but then there really wasn’t much choice). 

England isn’t known for great cuisine. We bought nearly all of our food from the military base commissary. We ate “on the economy” mostly when traveling or on a night out to the local pub. I totally fell in love with Indian food over those 3 years in England. Just delicious. If I ever go back to visit, I hope the Swaffham Tandoori place is still open. I’d order all my favorites at once. But only the chicken dishes. 

I remember being kind of grossed out by most English food, especially pub food that sat out for hours, or even days, in display cabinets. Spotted duck and toad in the hole and all those meat pies and puddings. Ew. I did like some Shepard’s pie and scotch eggs, which can be pretty yummy. I have a very vivid memory of picking someone up at the back door of a pub once or twice and seeing a cat drinking from a pot of stew on the stove. Not to mention we had a friend who sold deer road kill to the pub and I just couldn’t handle the thought of being served that for dinner. Also, the bar top was always covered in beer soaked yeasty smelling towels that probably rarely got a wash. A bacteria smorgasbord. Not that that stopped anyone from having a pint. Including myself. But, as it turns out, it wasn’t the hepatitis infested pubs that turned out to be the danger for us. It was the farmland’s grassy fields of cows. Mad cows. It will be pretty ironic if I end up dying from eating food I didn’t even like or want to eat in the first place.  

During the COVID pandemic, we heard that certain restrictions on mad cow disease prohibitions for donating blood were being lifted due to increased need for blood, but whatever those loosened restrictions were, they were not the one(s) that prevent me, and my oldest daughter, Ariel who spent most of her first three years in England, or my ex husband and all of our friends from those days, from donating blood. We still cannot. 

Here is what our research shows about the disease: "It can take up to 50 years for an infected person to show symptoms.  There are suspected links between Alzheimer's and mad cow disease.  Its long incubation period is called a silent period of infection.  It damages the central nervous system silently and progressively over time for years until it kills you. 

😳

Once a cow starts to show symptoms, it gets sicker and sicker until it dies, usually within two weeks to six months.  There is no treatment and no vaccine to prevent it.

As of 2019, 232 people worldwide are known to have become sick with this disease, and unfortunately, they all have died. It’s 100% fatal. 

It is thought that they got the disease from eating food made from cows sick with BSE. Most of the people who have become sick lived in the United Kingdom at some point in their lives. Only four lived in the U.S., and most likely, these four people became infected when they were living or traveling overseas.”

I’m writing this because I was recently tagged in social media in a post urging me to donate blood due to shortage. “But, I can’t,” I thought for the hundredth time. And was inspired to tell the story of the why. Maybe one day the restriction will be lifted. 

Or maybe I’m on my way to dying a slow, painful death of brain and spinal cord deterioration. I guess it’s a good thing I can’t pass that on. 

A beautiful river that ran by our house in England.  There were no cows.  

Turtle Boat Meetings

They say that looking forward to something is as good as doing it. My three daughters and I are planning a 12 day trip around Colorado and Utah this summer, and the planning meetings have so far been as enjoyable for me as I know the trip will be.

Last summer, two of my daughters and I made a 12 day road trip from Cheyenne, Wyoming down through Colorado and New Mexico and ending in El Paso, Texas. The pandemic conditions meant a lot of things were closed, and my anxiety levels were pretty high. I’m glad we did it, though, because my 18 year old daughter had just missed out on all the fun of a senior year of high school. What better things to distract her with than Mountain Ghosts and Desert Aliens, which was the theme of our trip.

This year’s theme is, somewhat inexplicably, Turtle Boat. I think it’s the name of a restaurant we have in the itinerary? Maybe. It’s definitely the name of the highly detailed Google Sheets tool we have been using to plan the trip. There’s a tab for each component of the trip, from the Attractions we want to see and do, the Places we will sleep, the Restaurants where we will eat (one is called Turtle Boat, I believe)and the Homework we have after each meeting. At one point there was a separate sheet just for deciding which Airbnb we would stay in while visiting Denver.

My oldest daughter is the author of the Google sheets document. She’s a planner and an organizer. My middle daughter keeps track of our homework assignments and our meeting dates. She also likes order and harmony. I’m probably the worst at doing my homework on time, and I’m definitely not the most organized person. My youngest has to be cajoled into paying attention in meetings by the middle child, because she’s addicted to Twitter these days, but she definitely does all her homework. Even if she found an Ice Cave for us to get excited about that has no ice in it whatsoever. 😉

We meet on FaceTime in the late afternoon/evenings for meetings that are on my calendar for an hour but generally last for 2-3. As someone who hates meetings and despises Zoom, how can I love Turtle Boat FaceTime so much?

Last summer, Ariel had planned the trip mostly herself. I loved that all I had to do was go along for the ride. As someone with way too much responsibility going on in my professional life, I really love just going with the flow in my personal life, when I can. I would ask Ariel, “what are we doing tomorrow,” and she had all the details at her fingertips. Ah, bliss. I’m really looking forward to this summer’s trip being the same.

We are wrapping up the final details (and it’s only the end of May). We’ve got all of our Airbnb’s lined up, most dinner reservations made and attractions tickets bought, flights booked, and rental car reserved.

I’m gonna have to come up with new reasons to convene Turtle Boat meetings through June and early July because the planning is almost as fun as the trip itself.

Unmasking the Anti-Masker problem

As a liberal I’ve been frustrated for years by the “problems” some people on the other side are always telling me are so bad. Like the war on Christmas, prayer in schools being prohibited, the left not supporting veterans, voter fraud, someone taking all their guns away etc etc. 

“These things are not really problems,” I’ve railed and railed. But my protests were in vain because the people who believe these are huge problems, believe this very strongly. They don’t need evidence. They’ve create compelling narratives that have become evidence in itself. It’s an insidious cycle. 

And just when I was becoming desensitized enough that all these fake problems weren’t making me so crazy, the pandemic started, and I’ve had to watch the left do the exact same kind of thing. Specifically with the whole “anti-masker” issue. I say this isn’t really an issue. Pretty much everyone is freaking wearing a mask, I insist. But those who believe in the anti-masker problem do not need evidence proving it is a huge problem. They point to someone they saw in the grocery store whose mask slipped below their nose and insist this is a conspiracy of epic proportions. Or they share a meme on Facebook and there you have it. 

Many people firmly believe that cases are rising because of all the anti-maskers. They laugh derisively, contemptuously at me when I ask where is the evidence of this. They scream from their social media platforms WEAR A MASK (where they are more than likely preaching to the choir if this was actually a huge issue since unfriending anyone who doesn’t feel the same way has become a much bigger problem in general than anti-maskers). 

I want to be clear that I wear a mask wherever I go. I support trying to stop the spread of respiratory droplets in any way we can. And I believe most people are like me. Do we love wearing masks? No. Do some people on the right use the mask issue as a piece in their narrative to “prove” that the left wants to “control them?” Sure. But they’re still wearing masks in the grocery store, and in restaurants and anywhere else it’s required. 

I know this won’t convince anyone who believes anti-masking is a huge problem. Nothing I’ve ever said before about fake huge problems has ever changed anyone’s mind. Just for writing this, I’ll be accused of being a secret Republican or of not caring that thousands are dying of the virus or of just being stupid and/or uninformed. But I’m willing to bet when we look back on this it’ll be as evident as hindsight usually is that the virus didn’t spread because of a huge anti-masker movement. 

So, what’s my point? I guess it just frustrates the hell out of me that when we focus so much energy on fake problems, real problems get ignored. And we have a lot of real problems. If everyone started screaming about a real problem from their social media platforms the way they do about masks, maybe we could bring serious attention to an issue that needs serious attention. Maybe we could replace WEAR A MASK! with something like- 

EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE ACCESS TO HEALTHCARE! 

or

NO ONE SHOULD LIVE IN POVERTY! 

INCREASE MINIMUM WAGE NOW! 

TAX REFORM IS WAY OVERDUE! 

STOP GERRYMANDERING! 

WE NEED TERM LIMITS! 

If we could vote on a new slogan, my personal favorites would include—

PUT KIDS FIRST!

FIND COMMON GROUND! 

LEARN HOW OUR GOVERNMENT WORKS! 

Food for thought Update to this post: 

One of my favorite reporters did a post on a recent event at our Alamodome in which he reported that 10 citations were given to people not wearing masks and 7 more people left or were removed without citations during the event. The capacity ceiling for the event was 11,000, so if 17 people were unmasked, that’s less than 1% of 1% unmasked (at capacity), but unless the place was practically empty and these 17 people represented a large majority in attendance, the numbers still don’t add up to a huge anti-masker problem. I know people with excel spreadsheets could whip up a “projection” of how many people these 17 could potentially infect, but since everyone else was masked, it still doesn’t add up to a huge problem. The bigger issue here should really be this: With city ordinances in place prohibiting groups of 10 or more indoors or outdoors, why in the world did this event even occur?!