Oh, too many brain cells today have been vanquished in an attempt to figure out All Things Public Transit.

The good news - I can now take up to $230 in pre-tax dollars for public transit commuter checks. Now to figure out how much?

On a regular basis I ride BART, MUNI (SF) and AC Transit (East Bay). MUNI and AC Transit take the Translink smart card. I can go to Walgreen’s and give them my commuter checks and they put money onto the card. Woohoo! BART takes BART flimsy paper cards, although allegedly Translink will be accepted by the end of the year - this promise has been a baited carrot stick for so long that I never will believe them until I see the green logo with my very eyes.

So, normally, I’d get 2 BART Plus tickets - which are regular BART tickets that you can flash on MUNI for access, but not AC Transit. In order to buy them via commuter check, I’d have to mail them in (timeliness is not a virtue of either mine or the USPS) or (what I did) go down to the Lake Merritt BART station and buy my two passes (Part A for the 1st-15th, then Part B from the 15th through the end of the month).

Now, not only are all of the rates going up in all the transit agencies ($2 instead of $1.75 on AC Transit; $2 instead of $1.50 on MUNI, and some percentage higher on BART since the fares are calculated by distance there), you can no longer buy BART Plus tickets anywhere except in the automated machines, which don’t take commuter checks. GAH.

The other frustrating thing is that if you ride BART, you can get a $0.25 discount if you hop on and transfer to either AC Transit or MUNI. Not if you pay by Translink card, so that’s potentially $1/day (or $20/month) that is lost in the shuffle.

And, BART may go on strike.

Long stupid story short, I have a headache from trying to play this stupid game of Transit Check CRAZY, I have no idea how much money I should pull out of my paycheck each month (I think I will have to break out an abacus for this), and the net result is that BART will still be crowded, MUNI and AC Transit will still be a deathtrap (the passengers and bus drivers are crazy), and I still won’t be able to get a good nap on any form of public transportation unless I bring my own goddamned pillow.

And after all of that jazz, I will end up buying:
- Two $60 BART tickets (for which their actual swipe value is $64 each)
- a MUNI flash pass
- an AC transit monthly pass loaded onto my Translink card.

All of that and I still will pay $30 extra a month post-tax dollars. Let the good times roll!

Casey: Why can’t I get any valium for Matthew’s surgery tomorrow?
Josh: Because it’s a Children’s Hospital. They treat children.

Yes, I am a ball of nerves here, I have to say. We’re getting up at 5AM (well, that’s the goal), Josh’s grandmother will be here at 5:30AM, and off we go. It’s ridiculous, the amount of anxiety I’m feeling, for something so ridiculously small (tubes in his ears), but there you have it.

In other news, how cute is my daughter?

In large chunks:

Chunk the First - Matthew’s scheduled for a 7:30AM surgery on Monday to put tubes in his eardrums. I know this is a routine thing but I am so anxious about it I dreamt horrible things about it last night. Yeesh. In it I was furious at Josh because he changed something around and I woke up, totally pissed. I had to remember he hadn’t actually changed any of our plans. In this dream I also thought that instead of coming to watch Lindsey on the day of Matthew’s surgery, Josh’s grandmother was actually going out on a date with Donna Noble’s grandfather.

Chunk the Second - Lindsey is doing well. Teething up a storm, screechy and totally adorable. She loves it when you dance with her, tickle her belly, or float her in the air. She also loves her fingers, her fist, and preferably jamming the entirety of it at once in her mouth. Also, drooling copiously. She’s now 19.2 lbs at a couple of weeks shy of six months. I grow chunky babies. She’s drank me out of house and home, and we’ve had to supplement a few bottles at daycare with formula. I am mostly over that - there’s only but so much my boobs can handle. We’ll muddle through.

Chunk the Third - Have you visited my photography website? Please do! Become a fan on facebook! I will be in Tallahassee and Orlando over Christmas this year, so if you’re in the area and would like to schedule a session while I am there, contact me.

Chunk the Fourth - I started back on Weight Watchers, perhaps because I am a masochist.

Chunk the Fifth - my new favorite diet soda? Coke Zero. Better living through chemicals, I say!

9:23 pm. I’m on the bus headed for home now - I had to work late tonight and so in Lindsey’s short life this is the first bedtime of hers I missed.

The first bedtime of Matthew’s I missed was around the same time. I had to work late, telling new students about living on campus and why they should live on campus. I remember talking to Josh that night, who gave Matthew a bottle and the both of them cried together before he fell asleep (Matthew, not Josh).

Tonight was similar. I talked to people about living on campus and why they should live on campus and Lindsey and Josh both cried (did you cry, Josh? I sure would have!) until she finally fell asleep. Even now, Matthew had a hard time settling in but thankfully did so without tears.

99% of every day of my adult, motherhood life I know I made and make the right decision for me to go into the office every day. My work for the most part brings me joy even during the most stressful times. But it’s these random days when I wish I had a different balance and could dictate how much of my day I spent with other people’s children.

It’s not all bad though. Josh tells me every day that the kids love me. I always tell him back that I can somewhat believe it from Matthew now because he’s more expressive these days but honestly, it’s hard for me to see Lindsey treating me anything other than “warm food source.” But today, knowing that she noticed and disliked my absence at bedtime, even if she gave Josh a run for his money, makes me believe in the power of her love just a little bit more.

Happy Mother’s Day one and all! If you are a mother or a grandmother, if you are waiting to become a mother or wish you were a mother, happy day. I was spoiled today by my little family - I got to sleep in (until 8, but that’s good for me!), Josh made me a quesadilla for breakfast, I got some alone and quiet time as well as my favorite Indian food for lunch from the farmer’s market, and my favorite activity of the day - a trip to Frog Park, on the border of Rockridge and Temescal in Oakland.

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Top 10 Things Found in Lindsey’s “Neck”

10. My hair (oh, the shedding!)
9. Ava’s hair
8. My milk
7. The same milk a day later
6. Crumbs of food (she’s not eating solids but her brother sure is)
5. Osama bin Laden
4. WMD
3. Dick Cheney’s conscience
2. High Fructose Corn Syrup
1. Neck? My daughter has no neck!

We didn’t have our traditional Chinese New Year dinner this year since Lindsey was so freshly born that the idea of making food for anyone was enough to make me want to rip my hair out. So we postponed it until this weekend, right before Josh’s birthday on Monday. Here’s what’s on the agenda. Bring tupperware!

Chicken Shanghai
Tea-smoked duck
Mushu pork
Shrimp with soy sauce
Lion’s Head Meatballs
Honey-fried cashews
Crispy Pomfret
Beef with Sa Tsa Chang
Chinese Broccoli
Chili-Lemon Octopus
Scallion Pancakes
*Dumplings
Sesame Noodles
Tea Eggs and Roasted Pork
Thousand Year Eggs & Tofu
Roasted Pork, Shrimp and Shiitake Mushroom Sweet Rice Stuffing

I am making everything from the * down. Josh started some of his dishes on Friday and let me just say, I was THISCLOSE to eating everything in sight when I got home from work on Friday. Yum.

First, a video compilation of three videos I took of Matthew getting his groove on. Lately he’s been inviting me to dance as well - it’s great fun! Until he asks you to pick him up and then your back hates you.

We are all doing well here. It’s been raining, which is nice because we sorely need it, but not nice because it kind of limits what we can do. I think I have wimped out on weather a lot since moving out here - I used to not get ticked until there was a big old snowstorm, but nowadays, toting an umbrella around makes me a tad bit miffed. Can anyone say “spoiled”?

Anyway, the kiddos are great. Matthew is in speech therapy and is doing well. He’s also sick - bronchiolitis - and sounds like he’s been smoking for 20 years. Otherwise, he’s good. We’ve gotten a referral for an ENT evaluation to see if maybe he needs tubes in his ears since he’s got chronic fluid there. Ick. Hopefully if we can remedy the fluid in his ears he will pick up on his language.

Lindsey is doing well. In a little bit I am going to get her ready for bed. This is the Baby Who Sleeps - we can put her down, awake and swaddled, and she will fall asleep on her own. She naps two great naps a day and sleeps from 7ish pm until 6ish am, with a few wake-ups in between but even so, just having a schedule in place makes me feel like a whole new person!

Josh and I went out last week on a Date (shh, don’t tell my husband) - Josh’s grandmother and cousins came over to babysit while we snuck out and caught the movie “Doubt” which was great, and then all of us went out to dinner, which was Korean barbecue, also great. It was nice to go see a movie, if only so I didn’t spend the entire time talking about the baby.

And that’s about it. I ordered some new fabric so at some point this week I need to sit down and start making stuff and get my sewing groove back. I’ve been trying to take a picture a day in 2009 and am pretty successful thus far! We’ll see how things pan out.

Everyone tells you when you have a second child, your heart somehow grows bigger to love the second one equally, or something like that. It wasn’t quite like that for me. Every time I look at Lindsey I am grateful for Matthew paving the way into my heart - without getting to know him and love him first, I wouldn’t be able to look at Lindsey and all the potential and excitement for our relationship in the years to come. I look forward to loving Lindsey when she is one year old and two years old and so on. So thank you, my son, for helping me eagerly anticipate motherhood a second time. What a gift you have given to me.

Matthew’s first time in a meitai:

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