Guess whose crossword was accepted by the NYT?

I just got the good news that Will Shortz has accepted a Sunday crossword co-constructed by my friend Tony and me. It will likely be many months before the New York Times Magazine runs this crossword, but: Wahoo!

It's that time of year: Heartfelt donation request time

But first, it's information time. Information about ovarian cancer. The wife of an acquaintance of mine, a woman I met briefly last year, died of ovarian cancer a week ago. Her name was Michele.

The disease was fairly advanced by the time it was diagnosed. For a year before diagnosis, her doctors said it was just irritable bowel syndrome, that's all—and they didn't recognize her vague symptoms as the warning signs of ovarian cancer.

Almost a year ago, my aunt died after a three-year struggle with ovarian cancer. She, too, had experienced vague symptoms and consulted multiple doctors for months before her cancer was finally discovered.

One of the biggest reasons that ovarian cancer is so deadly is that the symptoms are so nonspecific. From that Mayo Clinic link comes this information:

Recent studies have shown that women with ovarian cancer are more likely than are other women to consistently experience the following symptoms:

• Abdominal pressure, fullness, swelling or bloating
  
• Urinary urgency
  
• Pelvic discomfort or pain
  

Additional signs and symptoms that women with ovarian cancer may experience include:

• Persistent indigestion, gas or nausea
  
• Unexplained changes in bowel habits, including diarrhea or constipation
  
• Changes in bladder habits, including a frequent need to urinate
  
• Loss of appetite
  
• Unexplained weight loss or gain
  
• Increased abdominal girth or clothes fitting tighter around your waist
  
• Pain during intercourse (dyspareunia)
  
• A persistent lack of energy
  
• Low back pain
  

Now, how many of those problems have you experienced off and on? A lot, right? Gas, bloating, indigestion, constipation or diarrhea. Apparently what marks these as suggestive of ovarian cancer is persistence and worsening—rather than coming and going or acting up depending on what you've eaten, if those vague abdominal symptoms just don't go away, it's not a bad idea to ask your physician to give you a workup to rule out ovarian cancer. This might include a transvaginal ultrasound (using what I like to call the "cooter wand"), a rectovaginal exam (like a pelvic exam, only with two entry points), and/or a blood test to check your CA-125 level. (Note: CA-125 tests can be false-positive and freak you out, or miss many early-stage ovarian cancer cases, so it's not the be-all and end-all of ovarian cancer detection.)

On Saturday, May 3, I'll be taking part in the 11th Annual Break the Silence: Walk for Ovarian Cancer, held by the Illinois chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition. The NOCC is the nation's leading ovarian cancer public information and education organization; the group promotes research, raises awareness about ovarian cancer, and provides support for women and families dealing with the disease. If you'd like to sponsor me, please visit my donation page. There's no minimum donation, and every little bit helps. I'm hoping to raise $500 overall.

Thanks for your consideration, and please spread the word about ovarian cancer's nonspecific and deceptive symptoms. Many women and many physicians don't think to suspect ovarian cancer, so it's incumbent on all of us to be familiar with the symptoms and be able to advocate for ourselves and the women we care for.

I will spare you a photo

Really, it's that I'm too lazy to take a picture and post it. If I'm going to do that, then I'll get mired in the process of sorting through those other photos I wanted to post, and nothing will ever get done.

And I also don't want to horrify and repel you, or show you The Scarlet Pimple.

Words must suffice. On my neck, above the larynx/Adam's apple zone, just left of center, I have a giant...thing. I believe it to be an ordinary pimple, but it's completely ignoring the tea tree oil assaults I have administered, and it won't shrink or appear vulnerable to a good, firm squeeze. It is not anchored to anything firm.

In short, this thing is freaking me out, not to mention those who behold it.

It needs a name. And there will be a poll in the sidebar for one week. Won't you please help name this evil baby?

Feminist LOLcats!

Check 'em out. If you like LOLcats, you like feminism, or you like giggling, you need to see these annotated cat pictures.

My favorites are the "I'z not racizt, I has black cat frend!" and "I dansed, but revolushun no come."

Mr. Tangerine's special brand of genius

This morning, Ben had what we term "a messy poop." He wiped. He wiped again. He wiped some more. And so on, and so on. He may have sat down to a bowl with some TP already in it, but the approximately 29 wipings that followed? Overloaded the toilet's capacity to flush it all away. Ben flushed, the water level rose, and I lifted the tank lid and jiggled the whatsit to stop the influx of water.

"Honey! We have a situation here!"

Take a moment to ponder how you would remedy the situation.

The approach that Mr. Tangerine came up with was new to me. He stretched out a wire clothes hanger and used it to tug two thirds of the TP globs away from the escape hatch, and flushed. One third, down the hatch. Then he unleashed half of what remained, and flushed again. After that he neatly disposed of the hanger, and the toilet was cleared via a third flush.

Staged flushing! I never would've thought of that.

Note: This method is unlikely to work for a giant turd like the one in David Sedaris's "Big Boy.

What's the deal with femininity?

Twisty, who has resumed regular blogging of late, puts a new (to my brain) spin on the matter of femininity. Key excerpts:

The greater the sex-based dimorphism in commercial products, the easier it is to rationalize sex-based social discrimination. For it is upon the supposed enormous differences between men and women that our culture bases its wide approval of the concept that women’s essence justifies our ghettoization in the sex caste.

Picture disposable razors, molded from manly black or blue plastic or from feminine pink and lavender plastic. Clothes, wristwatches, rubber flipflops, deodorant, greeting cards—and now, Twisty reports, there's even a Russian vodka with an hourglass figure to its lavender bottle, wearing a Marilyn Monroe skirt. Can pastel girly beer be far behind?

Behold the neat trick. First, you make women act like simpletons, broodmares, janitors, mannequins, and sex slaves before you grant them social approval. You call this behavior “femininity” and explain that it is their essential nature, and that any deviation from the program will be punished. Then you infantilize and ridicule the ones who get it right, and vilify and abuse the ones who get it wrong (you can also vilify and abuse the ones who get it right, because, let’s be honest; the world is your oyster).

With so much riding on it, whether femininity is performed right or wrong is an issue of enormous concern to women. That’s where the Empowerful Pink Marketing Juggernaut comes it. They package femininity, changing it a bit every so often so that the old version eventually becomes obsolete, and sell it to women as insurance against getting it wrong. This pink capitalist enterprise has the dual effect of diverting women’s income back to the male-dominated megatheocorporatocracy, while simultaneously reinforcing women’s investment in the bogus feminine identity and marking (with pink, the color of female infancy) the objects tainted with girl-cooties. The woman festooned with pink accessories, therefore, may be easily identified from a distance as a friend to Dude Nation.

And the reverse is true—the woman who doesn't go in for traditionally feminine clothes, who doesn't have a high-maintenance hairstyle, who doesn't spend time and money on cosmetics, and who eschews high-heeled shoes is marked as a threat and often deemed to be in need of fixing. "With a perm, you could be really cute." "A little eyeliner would really bring your eyes out." "She needs to wax those caterpillars sprouting over her eyes." "She could stand to lose 10 pounds." "Wearing heels would visually lengthen your legs." "Man, she's ugly." "What a dog." You've probably said something like this at least once, and quite possibly been on the receiving end of this sort of judgment or "helpful" suggestion, aimed at wedging each of us into the femininity mold rather than helping us achieve our potential as humans.

Femininity, in fact, can’t even be practiced without stuff (which is one way of debunking the argument that it is an inherited sex trait). It is simply not possible for a woman without makeup and deodorant and lingerie and kitten heels and diet pills and clothes without pockets and anti-wrinkle cream that promises “glowing skin” and self-help books explaining the best ways to suck up to men and jewelry and razors and tweezers and lemon-scented cleaning products and boxes of Lean Cuisine in the freezer — all stuff that must be bought — to be fully feminine.

This is not to say that I will stop shaving my legs or getting highlights, or that I will reject any compliments about a new haircut or cute outfit. But I won't kid myself that I'm furthering the cause of feminism by playing along with femininity and reaping the benefits.

Dispatches from the schoolyard

I just reserved a date for Ben's birthday party at that garish Charles E. Rodent arcade place. It'll be a joint party with one of his friends who also has an April birthday. Yes, the site is loud and horrible to behold with one's eyes, but it entails so little effort on the part of the parent, my dominant lazy gene appreciates the Rat.

The other kid's mom was telling me today about a party her kid was invited to a couple years ago. The venue was Chicago's Navy Pier, and they were going to see Spider-Man 3 and eat at McDonald's and whatnot. And...the hostess informed the invited guests that she'd be needing $55 in advance from each kid ($75 per adult if they wished to accompany their kid). Can you imagine? Planning an expensive party and billing the guests up front? I'm not sure if anyone actually went to the unfortunate boy's birthday party.

This week's school newsletter mentions a child named Treasurer. Is that not the most awesome name ever for a kindergartner? I hope Treasurer doesn't turn out to be a sloppy money manager or an embezzler. (I also hope it wasn't a typo for Treasure, because that's not nearly as funny as a six-year-old Treasurer.)

One of Ben's classmates is named Windy. His parents came to Chicago from the other side of the world and named their son after the Windy City. True story.

That Cooter Festival

I got back yesterday from eight days in Florida. Ah, spring break! Ah, greenery! Ah, warmth! Ben played in the pool every day, and he even figured out how to swim. Yeah. Laps. The technique isn't textbook, but he gets across the pool, mostly with his face in the water, with confidence. The last time he was in a pool, over Labor Day weekend, he couldn't do this.

I thought about going to Inverness to find a "Save a fish, eat a cooter" t-shirt, because Mona had wanted one a couple years ago. But then I Googled that phrase, and found this blog post by a local bemoaning the hick reputation that the lame Cooter Festival was giving the county. (And that county needs all the help it can get—between the Badcock furniture store, Mama's Kuntry Kafe, and the U-Kill-Em self-serve pest control store, it doesn't need any more blows to its elusive sophistication.)

The week in Florida was the most relaxing vacation possible without spa treatments. My mother-in-law cooked a lot, the air and the pool had both just warmed up in time for our trip, we had wireless internet access, we slept late every day, we did laundry a couple times (that counts as relaxing because not having any clean clothes left is stressful), and Ben went in the pool twice a day. Good times. And now, it's an Easter Sunday full of laundry and getting ready for a busy week. And—sigh—there's about 5" of fresh snow on the ground from Friday's storm, only the evergreens are green, and the cold, dry air is working hard to chap my hands, smooth from a week in warmth.

This city ain't country

Chicago may be smack-dab in the middle of the Midwest, but that general heartland fondness for country music passed us right by. There are a few country music stations on the radio dial, but none of them are based in Chicago or even Cook County.

I saw a cowboy hat on the dashboard of a parked pickup truck this morning. You know what demographics sport cowboy hats in my neck of the woods? Mexicans and gay cowboys, possibly also gay Mexican cowboys. But not many of Nashville's key demographic.

This suits me just fine, as a man in a cowboy hat is not a particularly compelling image for me.

So how about you—do you live in country-music country or a country-free zone?

If a writer asked my advice on pronouns, here's what I'd tell them

Peter Seibel says everything that needs to be said about they used as a gender-neutral singular pronoun in lieu of he, she, or he/she. Shorter Seibel: It was used long before the no-singular-they rule was invented, it works well, and it's not going away.

Read it, love it, refer stick-in-the-mud he proponents to it.

The 2008 San Patricio Limerick Festival!

JP, who is now teaching Spanish in China, likes to celebrate St. Patrick's Day with an annual Limerick Festival. I need to get my creative hat on before I head over there. Haiku and senryu are so much easier to write than limericks with their set meter and rhyme scheme. Hmm. Must think hard.

So write some limericks and post them at JP's Fluency blog!

Apt vocabulary pupil

(This is one of those lazy, linky posts without original content. But if it's new to you...)

Nancy Friedman (who has a cool blog about words and product/company names) writes about John McGrath's interview of Ammon Shea, whose upcoming book is about reading the entire damned Oxford English Dictionary, all 21,000 or so pages.

Shea enjoyed discovering unfamiliar words that are just so perfect, that so aptly describe a concept in a single word. My favorites of Nancy's favorites of Shea's favorites:

apricity: the warmth of the sun in winter (mmm, yes, I love that sensation)

onomatomania: vexation with being unable to find the right word (grr, that's so frustrating!)

peracme: the point at which one’s prime has passed (heh—I want to find an opportunity to hurl this word at someone who's leapfrogging their peracme)

psithurism: The sound of leaves moved by the wind (see also susurration)

sialoquent: someone who spits when they speak is this (sounds like a compliment along the lines of "eloquent," only "ptui!")

velleity: a mere wish or desire for something, unaccompanied by any action of effort ("Man, I wish I had some chocolate right now." "Somebody should do something about that.")

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

The crossword tournament was a blast. Several people asked me to sign copies of my book, which of course I loved. One person recognized me without my name tag because she'd seen me on Merv Griffin's Crosswords. And a bunch of people said they appreciated my crossword blog. The attention? I eat that up. Big time. I'm a Leo, after all.

I made my goal for the tournament (with no room to spare in the rankings). I am still sleep-deprived because I haven't been catching up on my sleep, and I only slept from 3 to 7 a.m. Friday and Saturday nights. Not that there was insomnia—it was intentional. (Why go to bed early and find yourself unable to sleep from antsy nerves when you can be socializing during those hours instead?) But lousy timing—I have an eight-hour sleep debt to make up, and we're about to lose an hour with daylight saving time kicking in this weekend.

If you want a peek at the tournament, check out the article and video at ESPN Magazine. Yes, I said ESPN. As in sports. They had a reporter and cameraman working the tournament. In the video, you'll see four-peat champion Tyler Hinman, the 23-year-old guy I go to pub quiz with on Tuesdays. And Will Shortz, and assorted other people I know. ESPN, baby! The crossword nerds have long awaited attention from ESPN—when will the tournament finals be televised? Maybe that day is coming.

Edited to add this: If you want to try your hand at the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament crosswords and send them in for scoring (to find out how you would have placed at the tournament), you can order the puzzles here.

Brooklyn, here I come!

Twelve hours from now (weather and O'Hare air traffic control permitting), I will be half way to New York for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament! Here's how the tournament works: Six crosswords on Saturday, preliminary standings posted around 8 a.m. Sunday, one more crossword Sunday morning, then the finals (which I do not expect to be in, but I won't turn down an invitation). Friday and Saturday night will be devoted to schmoozing at the hotel bar. Daytime breaks are likely to take me to Jacques Torres's chocolate shop and other short Brooklyn excursions.

And late at night, when the bar closes? Time for bed. In my hotel room that I will have all to myself. I don't mind sharing a bed with my husband—in fact, I much prefer it—but the kid, ai-ai-ai. Most nights, he wanders down the hall before sunrise and climbs into bed with Mom and Dad. And sometimes he snores. Or tosses and turns. Or grinds his teeth so loud. So two nights to myself. Yay!

The insanity of clothing sizes

Explain this to me.

I bought some women's t-shirts from the Gap about 15 years ago, size medium. They've been downgraded to pajama drawer status, but they're loose and comfy, and the cotton's nice and soft.

In the interim, breast augmentation surgery has made a few million American women's boobs bigger, and WonderBras and their rivals added padding to women who have eschewed implants. And the population has also grown increasingly obese over the years.

So how come now, an American Apparel women's tee in size extra-large barely stretches over my torso? I have a "normal" body mass index, so it's not as if I'm freakishly outsized. I know the snug fit has become more popular in the last five or ten years, but really: an XL is too small for me? WTF? I don't get what's happening here.

Randy Pausch's "last lecture"

Apparently there's this concept in academia of the "last lecture"—if you could only lecture once more before you died, what would you say?

Oprah's favorite doctor, Mehmet Oz, heard about an engineer type named Randy Pausch who's dying of pancreatic cancer, and Oprah had Pausch on her show to reprise his "last lecture." The video is here, and it's well worth the 11 minutes it takes to watch if you aren't one of the millions who've already seen it.

It's inspiring (and funny, and touching, and straightforward without being trite), and it reminds us all to keep our focus on what's important. My cynicism put itself on hold for those 11 minutes.

The name's Tempic. Peter Tempic.

Benjamin recently suggested that I should get one of those Peter Tempic mattresses. That was a couple weeks ago, and it still cracks me up.

That boy rocks, it must be said. He's funny (intentionally—not just with malapropisms), he's sweet, he always praises my (all too rare) cooking. And he's a pretty damned good eater for a 7-year-old. We went out for dinner tonight, to an Indian restaurant. (Free street parking right in front! What are the odds, right?) He loved dipping his paneer pakora (batter-fried cheese) in both the tomatoey sauce from my alu matar (potatoes and peas in a tomato-onion sauce) and some mango chutney. He had some chicken pakora too, which looked to have tandoori seasoning inside the batter coating. Maybe it was too ordinary for him—he didn't eat that much of it. And for dessert, we all shared gulab jamun, those doughnutty balls in a sweet syrup. Neither Ben nor I liked the dessert, but hey, we both tried it.

I was too afraid to try Indian food until I was nearly 30. The kid, he is a good eater, adventurous and open to trying new things. Mr. Tangerine waited out Ben's infancy with great trepidation, wondering if my picky-eater genes would win out. Nope, it appears not. Ben seems to have inherited his dad's fondness for flavor, variety, and food explorations.

Creepy phone call

By the way, at my other blog, I wrote up the game show experience. The guy who (undeservedly) won took umbrage at how I portrayed him in my blog last week. And he tracked down my phone number. And he called me. At my house. At 10 p.m.

That's fucking creepy, right? I mean, how much of a sense of entitlement do you have to have to call a near stranger after 9 p.m., first off? Isn't that the general rule of thumb, that you don't call someone after 9 unless you know them well enough to know it's OK? And to phone a blogger? WTF? Wouldn't the first line of action be a blog comment or e-mail?

I asked why he cared what anyone else says about him—why can't he be just content with the seven grand? And do you know what he said? That the money is nothing to him—he can make that in a day. Obnoxious, right?

What a twit.

Cognitive dissonance

The days grow longer now that we're just over a month away from the vernal equinox. Spring is coming! The sun's not setting until about 5:30 now, so there's an extra hour of daylight in the afternoon.

However: It's 13°F. And that's a good 15° warmer than yesterday.

So which is it? In this awkward in-between stage, do we focus on the lengthening days and strengthening sunshine, or do we wallow (indoors, of course, with fleece and flannel) in the arctic chill, watching the snow fall and wondering if our corner of the planet will ever thaw?

Watch me!

A lovely friend who shall remain nameless owing to copyright issues has put my Merv Griffin's Crosswords episode on YouTube (sans the first round, which I wasn't in): Part 1 and Part 2.

What struck me at the beginning of the first round was this: "Hey, Ilene and Jeff were way thinner than that!" Somehow, all the contestants (self included) look heavier than in real life, whereas Ty Treadway looks the same on TV as in person. How can that be? I swear he didn't look anorexic in person. (Just foxy.)