A Girl’s Diaper Change

I’m a girl with girl parts that I’ve had for 35 years and am very familiar with their operation and maintenance. When I had my baby boy 8 years ago, he came with a whole new set of parts – externally hanging ones. I could not relate to these parts, but quickly became a diaper-changer extraordinaire – the baby penis and the balls were easy to clean.

Fast forward to 7 weeks ago when my baby girl was born. One of the pediatricians in the hospital came in to give her an exam and off came the diaper and with it, the girl diapering lesson.

"Make sure you clean her vagina – inside the folds," she instructed. "Pull it apart and get it thoroughly clean," she went on. Then she not-so-gingerly spread my baby's delicate parts and checked them out.

Oh goodness me. This felt very invasive. She made mention that we don’t have to get rid of “all the lubrication” – some was normal.

But how would I know how much was normal? I’m a perfectionist and would lean on the side of scrubbing said-body-part clean. After baby girl’s first poop, it became apparent that the spreading part of the diaper change was imperative to thorough cleaning. Whereas a boys parts are ‘what you see is what you get,’ a girl’s parts are in line with a girl’s character – always hiding something inside and you really have to dig deep to clean the shit out.

Another difference that I never expected was the fountain pee. Baby boys have a bad reputation for peeing the minute the diaper comes off – a yellow streaming fountain that usually saturates diaper changer. Girls, however, with their folded parts, don’t come with this assumption. My baby girl has proven to me – over and over now – how wrong it was to presume there would be no female pee fountain. In fact, she has, in her 7 short weeks, given me more squirting yellow displays than my boy ever did.

I love that she’s bold like that. Just wait until I impose and pass along onto her my public restroom shtick.

I was a Witness?

Two years ago I played the role of a good Samaritan and now I got a subpoena delivered to my home. (Two weeks after having a newborn.) Delivered to my doorman (not in my hands). Without an envelope and left for me to pick up at my leisure.

It all began on an August afternoon two years ago when after taking my grandmother to the doctor, I vaguely saw (they call this “a witness”) a woman get hit by a car. I think the car hit her foot or leg. I don’t remember the specifics and she never told me. I remember she was able to walk, but I also remember thinking she must be in serious shock. I was not the one who called 9-1-1. I don’t remember who did that.

There were others there, but nobody stayed after the initial Manhattanite gasp and chatter. The woman was all by herself; no one bothered to stay with her, assuming the authorities would take care of it. But because I didn’t have to be anywhere by any certain time, I felt compelled to stay with her.

Just earlier that year, on another midtown corner during rush hour, a much older and heavier woman had broken her fall with my knee. I remained standing still, stuck in pain, as she fell crashing forward. I stood shocked, in serious knee pain, thinking to myself, “Shit, this is more than just a boo-boo.” While everyone surrounding the fallen women jumped to help her up; I was the broken tree on the corner.

She got up and on her way, continuing uptown, someone’s eyes caught mine as I winced in pain and she asked me, “You’re not OK, are you?”

The Russian martyr in me took possession of my voice and I mouthed that I was OK. I somehow managed to hobble one block up to the bus and then up a flight of stairs to my boyfriend’s apartment. Later that night I put together a living room full of Ikea furniture, unevenly balancing on one leg. Good practice for the next six weeks I spent on crutches.

The moment that lingers with me during that incident will be the feeling of being very alone in a big city when I was in pain. Now on this August afternoon, I wanted to be there for someone who was also feeling very alone, hurt and afraid.

About a year later, or sometime between now and then, I got a call or a letter or both from someone that led me to understand that now there was a lawsuit and I was the only witness. For which side, I’m not sure.

Apparently one of them wants me to testify or give a deposition or something that sounds very Law & Order – and I don’t want to. (Nor can I as a lactating mom of a newborn.)
The reality is that I didn’t even see the whole accident; I just saw a scared woman. I’ve told them that.

Now I’m being harassed - on the phone, on Facebook, now at my home - by legal assholes or insurance assholes or any other person that fits into the ambulance-chasing scene.
It kind of made me understand why everyone else fled the scene and I was left being the only one that stayed behind to bear witness.

What kind of lesson is this perpetuating in society?

Month One: Check

Throughout life, we’re behaviorally trained to rely on somebody else to tell us that we’re doing a good job. We perpetually seek validation (and reward?) for our actions. First our parents chant “good job” as we learn life’s basics. Then throughout our childhood and our educational careers, we count on teachers, tests and grades to present us with the grand check mark that we are in fact doing what we’re supposed to be doing. Finally in our jobs, we wait for our bosses to commend us or to give us a review – or at least to sign our paychecks to substantiate the job we’re doing.

Being a mother, though, is a job where we give ourselves our own grade. We raise our children, watching as their actions mirror our parenting. But before they’re old enough to be in the pre-therapy phase, they’re tiny babies. And how do we know if we’re doing it right?

I count on the pediatrician for that. Oh, what a power I bestow upon her.

Yesterday we took our baby for her one-month doctor’s visit.

Even though this is offspring number 2, many (of the same) questions made my sheet. Silly things like, “is her skull bones supposed to dip in like that?” or “how long will she do the cross-eyed Jerry Lewis thing?” Mostly I eagerly awaited the grand weigh-in. Fattening her up in these first few months of life is much akin to a final exam in determining the class’ overall grade.

While my baby was sleeping well and seeming satisfied after feedings, I wanted to see the proof that breastfeeding was working. I was still in doubt and in shock that I could do it. I needed to see the numbers. And we did, we did! Weight and height and head size – all properly growing!

The doctor tells us that she’s very proud of us. She used those specific words.

So elated, a huge smile spreads on both our faces. Nothing better than hearing words of a healthy baby. Good job boobies.

Month one, check plus.

Capture a Screen Shot with Mac

Warning: For those of you whose google search to “How to Screen Capture on Mac” brought you to this page, I apologize because I don’t usually write about this kind of stuff. (Not that I’m not great at technical stuff; I actually am. I just choose not to write about it. Because there are funnier things to write about. This isn’t funny, it’s just darn useful. For those of you that have Macs. And for those of you that want to capture a screen shot.

This is a great list of ways to Capture a Screen Shot with Mac OS X:

1. To capture the entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3. The screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.

2. To copy the entire desktop, press Command-Control-Shift-3. The screen shot will be placed on your clipboard for you to paste into another program.

3. To capture a portion of the desktop, press Command-Shift-4. A cross-hair cursor will appear and you can click and drag to select the area you wish to capture. When you release the mouse button, the screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop. (The file is saved as PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier.)

4. To capture a specific application window, press Command-Shift-4, then press the Spacebar. The cursor will change to a camera, and you can move it around the screen. As you move the cursor over an application window, the window will be highlighted. The entire window does not need to be visible for you to capture it. When you have the cursor over a window you want to capture, just click the mouse button and the screen shot will be saved as a PNG file on your desktop. (The file is saved as PDF in Mac OS 10.3 and earlier.)

5. Add Control to the two shortcuts above to place the screen shot on the clipboard instead of saving it to the desktop.

6. Another method for capturing screen shots in Mac OS X is by using the bundled Apple utility, Grab, located in the Applications > Utilities folder. Grab is useful if you need to include a cursor or a menu in your screen shot, or if you want to save your screen shot to TIFF format. To include a cursor, first go to Grab Preferences and select the cursor icon you wish to have in your screen shot. To capture the screen with Grab, run Grab, then choose of the capture modes from the "Capture" menu: Selection, Window, Screen, Timed Screen.

7. When you choose the Selection mode in Grab, you can capture a specific region of the screen by dragging around it. Grab will display a tooltip showing the size of the region you have selected and the screen shot will open in a window when you release the mouse button. The cursor will not be included.

8. When you choose the Window mode in Grab, an instruction window will appear asking you to select the window you wish to capture, then click the "Choose Window" button. When you click the button, the instructions will disappear and the window you click ill be captured, including the mouse cursor at the position where you click (if a cursor was selected in Preferences).

9. When you choose the Screen mode in Grab, an instruction window will appear asking you to click the screen when you are ready to capture. The mouse cursor will be included in your screen shot at the position where you click (if a cursor was selected in Preferences).

10. When you choose the Timed Screen mode in Grab, an instruction window will appear, allowing you to prepare your screen for capture. When you are ready, press the "Start Timer" button and you will have ten seconds before the screen is captured. This allows you to open menus and sub-menus, if necessary. After ten seconds the entire screen will be captured. The mouse cursor will be included in your screen shot if a cursor was selected in Preferences.