Hoofnagle.org

So, I know everyone is waiting with the proverbial baited breath for a gush of a posting about how gorgeous our vacation was. Um. Sorry. While on the nightflight home, sitting in the middle of a 3 seat row with a child slumped on either side of me and my tray table almost touching their heads as I scribbled, what I was thinking about was what I *always* think about. The logistics of being a happy parent. Groan if you must. I'd been up to my eyeballs in this project for 2 weeks. The beauties of Guatemala will come in due time. Herewith: Taking the kids bush and doing it happily. Lesson 1: Your MedKit Shots and Hygiene are Not to be Shirked

You've decided to take your kid someplace your neighbors arch your eyebrows and say "Is that really a good idea?" and "Wasn't there poverty/civil war/famine there recently?" First order of business is to mind your health -- if the CDC suggests shots GET THEM. For Guatemala they recommend Hep A (which every child in the US receives at age 3 anyway) and Typhoid both of which are food and water born illnesses. For the lowlands they recommend malaria medicines if you're going to be there long and a liberal use of 30% DEET bug repelants for kids, 70%+ for adults no matter how long you're there. Permethin is something you can spray on your clothes to kill mosquitos should they land where they can't bite. Whatever your feelings about the evils of DEET for daily use in your home country, suck it up and don't get malaria. Or dengue. It's a couple of weeks. Use the DEET. Carefully. Age appropriately. But use it.

Other medical oddiments you can't live without: Pepto for Kids. Pepto for Adults. Imodium. Emetrol. Powdered gatorade which when diluted to about 1/3 strength is a health practioner recommended electrolyte replacement for illness, Advil for Kids. Advil for adults. Bandaids. Neosporin. A thermometer. Purel. Did I mention the Purel? P-U-R-E-L. You will learn it is your dearest friend. If you use it regularly whenever there's no soap, all of those other things I listed (except perhaps the bandaids and the Tylenol) will be irrelevant.

For the conservative, you might also ask your pediatrician for a prescription for some heavy duty antibiotics and a couple of epipens. We didn't ask for the antibiotics. We figured if we got scared enough to think we needed antibiotics we'd be finding a doctor in-country but the epi pens are something I no longer feel safe traveling without even as an adult. In Thailand 10 years ago, I who have no food allergies, got a case of hives from eating *something* on the night train to Chengmai. If I'd had even a kid-strength pen then I'd have used it on myself. Get an epi pen. And then laugh about how you didn't need it. If you don't use the soap/Purel you won't be laughing.

Purel or soap are only a part of your new religious discipline mostly related to eating and drinking. You never drink anything that wasn't sealed before you opened it. You never eat anything raw unless it had a skin that is no longer present. You only use a straw if you see it wrapped in paper and remove the wrapper yourself. You can break these rules and you might even get away with it as long as you're sensitive to the overall cleanliness of the places you eat. I talked to a guy who had been eating fresh salads in all sorts of restaurants for weeks with no ill effects. And bully for him. But he's not three years old and his dysentery is his problem to deal with in isolation. My dysentery or my kids gets out of hand and 3 other people are getting scared, bored and grossed out by it.

Other than your food observances, there's really only the one great commandment you break at your extreme peril. Wash. Your. Hands -- With. Soap. You do it before you eat. You do it every time you use the bathroom. You do it every time you touch the ground. You do it just because you can't remember when you did it last. I am convinced. If you will just do this, you can avoid almost every ill that comes your way. Our family case study was an interesting one. Betsy still sucks her fingers. Ginger doesn't. We warned Betsy thoroughly and carefully that we didn't want to stop her sucking on her fingers but that if she wasn't careful about washing she could be violently sick. We warned Ginger, too. But she's three. And not interested in hygiene.

What can I say? The results were notable. Ginger was the sickest of us all. While she never threw up, and we never had a day when we were stuck because she had to be near a bathroom every 15 minutes, we fought about handwashing, fed her Pepto like candy and carried diapers at the ready incase a toilet was completely inaccessible (it never came to that). Reed came next. He munched Pepto and cursed a bit. I took no meds but felt a tad ill. Betsy? Betsy was an OCD hand-washing maniac. And she was absolutely untouched.

I'd heard it from my nursing friends. I'd heard it from my teacher friends. I knew my special ed teacher sister in law, swears by it. Wash. Your. Hands. With. Soap.
I'm a convert. I think I'll go wash my hands now.

Posted by karen at 08:39 AM

The first NOVA Girl Geek Dinner is September 12 around the corner from my house at Viget Labs. It's free, but you gotta register to attend. So I'll see you all there.

(P.S. Super Happy Dev House will begin at my house in either late September or early October depending on how swamped I am when I come back from vacation.

Date announcements will happen just after Labor Day.)

Posted by karen at 11:18 AM

Well, I haven't touched this blog in far too long. Should YAPC people visit because of this post, ignore the CSS, the creaky MT install. *shrug* Whatever. I'm busy.

So, I've spent the past 3 days at YAPC::NA 2008 and for all my friends who don't work in perl, I rather pity you. It's not that your Java, Ruby and bizarro flash-interpretive languages aren't good to write. They are (some of them -- ahem). But *you* haven't seen Ingy the professional ham do a strip-tease. (Tossing his underwear from behind the curtain, I tell you!) or heard Matt Trout get good laughs out of righteous indignation and the word fuck or heard the "I'm f*cking Steve Ballmer" song. (Which I'm trying to find, but it seems not to be online anywhere. Not shocking since it was just released "into the wild" about 45 minutes ago and it would've been spoiled if anyone had seen it early.

Point being, the perl people? They are fun. And friendly too. There were 350 people here, most of them seasoned programmers even if they were new to perl and the level of investment in the community was very high. My frivolous regret? I didn't bring enough cash with me to the auction to compete for the right to be the auctioneer in charge of selling off lunch with Larry Wall. (Who accepts being sold like an expensive tart every year with real grace). And as much as I like perl what this really reminded me is how much I love code. My code. Your code. Any code someone is really joyfully writing.

Therefore, I hereby declare that (as soon as I clear it with my spouse) there will officially be a monthly SuperHappyDevHouse at my place in Washington once a month. Dates to follow. If too many people want to do this, we will be forced to find alternate space but what the hell. If I don't set dates to hack. I don't hack. So come on over. Coffee's brewing.

Posted by karen at 06:43 PM

I uploaded a bunch of Halloween parade pictures here. However, I've finally got off my rump and password protected my kids photos. I'm gonna send out the password in email to those I have email for, but... a lot of you (ILEN!) I don't. So! If you want to see my pictures using Scott Evans's wonderful new photo gallery maker applejuice ping me and I'll send it to you.

Posted by karen at 02:57 PM

So we recently lost our minds completely and allowed Betsy, our about-to-be-four-year-old, to invite everyone she knew to our house for a party. Our thinking went thusly: We will not go to Chuckee Cheese or other venue in which children disperse in all directions and don't hang out with each other or their parents. We will not be having a Princess Fest in which little boys would have a poor time. We will not be buying a cake that someone else made and we will not be supplying pony rides or any other such insanities, else when she's sixteen she'll be asking us to finance a moonshot. So many things were going to have to bow to mommy and daddy's desires for wholesome, non-commercial fun that by-god, we said to ourselves, at the least she should be allowed the extravagance of inviting whoever she wanted.

And the list grew. And it grew. And it grew. And the RSVP list sat. And it sat. And it sat. Until two days before the shindig when suddenly a flood of "yup, yup. Planning to be there!" Phonecalls came to me while I was trying to work. 1,2, 3...15... 25... ohgodohgod 32 kids. Right. And attendant parents. Whom we will have to feed and entertain.

Now a blow-by-blow account of sitting up until midnight prepping goodie bags, stuffing the pinata (because who could resist letting little kids beat Dora the Explorer with a big ole stick) might not interest you. And a post mortem of things we ought to have done (for example starting the grill at 9am and prepping ALL food the night before) also might be overly nitty gritty. The party happened. Reed, my mom and I worked like crazy. Betsy seemed to have a pretty good, though somewhat overwhelming, time and she and Ginger collapsed in an exhausted puddle when it was all over.

But when the party was all over, we still hadn't opened presents yet. And that's worth a discussion. I thought hard about whether to post this post. Would attending parents who read this blog be offended? Did I care? I dithered. I fiddled. And in short, anyone who is insecure enough to wring their hands and say-woe-is-me-she-hates-us-cause-we-didnt-include-a-gift-receipt has got it all out of proportion. I hate no one. The things Betsy was given were lovely. And other friends could use this entry. Nuf said. People with little children who will attend parties in the future, consider the following rules next time your kids are invited to a birthday. The following are good birthday party ettiqutte for (at least) the preteen set.

1. As a matter of ettiquette, it's polite to call the inviting parents and ask them what their preferences are about gifts for their kids.

2. If you make the aforementioned call, it is negated as a politeness unless you actually USE the information so gleened to buy an appropriate gift.

3. Especially if you did not follow rules 1 and 2, it is polite to include a gift receipt with what you buy so that it can be returned if it's a duplicate or ... ahem... deemed hopelessly inappropriate.

4. If for some reason you really can't do 1, 2, or 3... buy something without monstrous Disney or other marketing push behind it. Books -- especially classics -- are *very* safe purchases.

5. Extra credit for thoughtfulness goes to parents who put presents into gift bags instead of wrapping them in wrapping paper. This is for two reasons: a. It makes parental pre-snooping of gifts to be sure there's nothing you don't want your tot to have much much easier and b. You can reuse the gift bag next time your own child takes a gift to a party.

I may actually have an ammendment to the overall list next September about how you should behave when the parents ask that no presents be brought. I think that's what we're going to try for the next few years.

Peace, yall.
K.

Posted by karen at 12:17 PM