del wins!

congratulations to miss del l. who guessed aislinn's weight exactly.  :)

they say it's your birthday

she's here!

Kitten, born 7:14 p.m., august 28, 2008, 6lbs 11oz, 19.25 inches, long blonde hair and dark blue(?) eyes, after ten hours of mostly painless labor (yay epidural!) and only three pushes.

more later.

i am not afraid

me last december:

me this morning:

how is this even possible?

i hope i've made a full turnaround by this december, beginning TOMORROW!

greatest quote ever

“If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the kids of Texas.”

- Miriam “Ma” Ferguson, former governor of Texas

courtesy of my fellow long-suffering attorney and red state resident mark

i'm dreaming of white house/black market

i have had some crazy vivid dreams during pregnancy.  well, actually, it's not unusual for me to have crazy vivid dreams and i almost always remember what i've dreamed the night before.  but in pregnancy, man, some of the stuff i dream just ca-razy.

i've always been big on clothes.  my closet is organized by item, season, and color (long-sleeved shirts, short-sleeved shirts, suits, long pants, short pants, skirts, jackets, coats, all in ROYGBIV order).  my mom thinks that this is a sign that i am nuts.  none of us have any idea where this trait comes from because mom and my sister aren't remotely as OCD.  i find myself foisting this obsession onto Princess.  she's not quite old enough yet to put up all her own clothes, so i'm still in charge of her closet, and it is quite lovely.  her clothes are so brightly colored that when they're all ironed and lined up in order it's a sight to behold.

/end hyperbole

but that's getting off topic.  one of the hardest things i've endured this pregnancy has been two whole seasons (an entire spring and summer) of no new clothes.  at least not clothes that count.  this is going to sound extraordinarily petty but i'm going to say it anyway: walking into the mall puts a lump in my throat because it's full of clothes that i can't wear.

so anyway, the other night i had a dream about clothes and i can NOT get it out of my head.  in the dream i was walking out of a mall and i was wearing this dove-grey wool-blend suit that i'd just bought.  the jacket was single-breasted with a low stance and one button, and the skirt was pleated beginning at mid-thigh and hit just at the right part of my knee to make my legs look slimmer (which is key when you're short), and i was wearing black stuart weitzman pointy-toe snakeskin stilettos and i had a thin, square, flat laptop bag that matched.

and then later in the dream i was wearing a 3/4 length burnt orange nubby wool sweater with oversize buttons and a knee-length plaid a-line skirt with brown suede boots.

there.  i'm glad to get that off my chest, because i can't stop thinking about those outfits.  i want them.  they don't exist but i want them.

this is why when i shop for clothes, i follow Melissa's Two Rules for Shopping:  

1.  always go alone.  this is because i shop at a furious pace and i get extremely impatient with people who want to try things on, can't decide if they like something, etc.  not me.  no no no.  if i see it and i want it, i will buy it unless it's truly cost prohibitive, and there is never a question of whether or not i like something - it's an immediate yes or no.  

2.  always leave the mall IMMEDIATELY once you've spent what you have to spend.  keep your eyes directed at the floor and head directly to the nearest exit.  otherwise i will see things that i want, and once i see them, I CAN'T GET THEM OUT OF MY HEAD.  it's like i have a photographic memory for clothes.  they will call to me in my sleep, and a few days later i will end up back at the mall buying them, zombie-like.  yes here is my amex please take it.

there is no point to this post.  i guess what got me started thinking about it is that i saw my cousin jasen today and he was wearing this really slick pressed white dress shirt with blue and brown pinstriping and i found myself thinking, "that looks like its from banana republic. oh lordy it has been so long since i set foot in there HOW DO I MISS THEE LET ME COUNT THE WAYS."  he has good taste in his genes, though.  last winter i saw his mom--my aunt--in this mid-length mid-weight wool [wool again!] overcoat in impossible-to-maintain-but-gorgeous winter white and dark tailored jeans and i *still* think about it.  i could never have a coat like that because i would immediately spill soy sauce all down the front or something - especially now that i'm entering the Tiny Grubby Hands phase of my life.  but if you knew my aunt - she can just pull that sort of outfit off perfectly.  it's like she was born in white wool.

so.  i am really excited for it to be fall (did you notice the "wool" theme running through this post?), and i am really excited to wear Normal Clothes again.  

/end self-indulgent blogging.

nintendo ds lite

J just came home with this for me:

he got super mario brothers, too - my all-time favorite.  i'm easily amused, but that's no secret, as nothing can make me laugh harder than someone getting injured on america's funniest home videos.  

now i'll have something to do in the hospital.  i was planning on taking my mac with me, anyway.  do you think they have wireless internet in the rooms at st. francis?

do you think it would be cheesy to order an obamababy onesie for her to wear home?

do you think i could be any more of a yuppie?

original baby poll

my astute friend mark noticed that no one has guessed august 28 and moved to change the date of his guess.  i told him no fair.  he said this:

Motion to withdraw and substitute new date. It will not impede the progress of the imminent birth, and it will not be prejudicial to any other party, as no other party has made claim to the proposed substitute date despite adequate notice and opportunity.

how should i rule?

rise and shine

Princess talking to me at 7:30 this morning while i drank my coffee and read the news online:

"at school in kindergarten we don't take a nap anymore but ms. s calls it time to rest our brains but we don't have to go to sleep unless we want to go to sleep she says and miss m reads us a book and she reads us a book yesterday and this little boy and this little girl they were brother and sister and the brother got mad and said, "oh i'm going to kill you!" but that's not nice is it we should never say we're going to kill anyone i shouldn't ever say i want to kill Kitten right because we don't kill people and not our sisters we don't kill any living things except bugs but not all bugs just bad bugs that are bothering us and want to hurt us and then we should go ask an adult to help us right because we shouldn't be touching bad bugs by ourselves we have to ask for help but 911 is for help for police and for ambiance and for fire department and but who do they know where's you're calling? but if i don't know the address - but i don't think there's going to be a fire when i'm a kid, right? that's why i have to think and just remember the phone number for my mommy and for my daddy and i don't always have a phone 'cause but grown ups always have a phone in case they have to call someone right except for kids 'cause they don't know how to use cell phones."

that wasn't all of it, that was just the part i caught transcribing verbatim.  man, she's a talker.

let the countdown begin

i am scheduled to be induced next thursday, august 28.  no, i didn't really *want* an induction, but you know what? i am tired of being pregnant!  and honestly having a date certain is tremendously beneficial mentally and emotionally.  i can't imagine just not knowing.  i, for example, was TWENTY DAYS OVERDUE when i was born june 24, 1980 in a record-breaking heat wave, as my mother has been quick to point out on multiple occasions in the last nine months (hi, mom! love you! thank you!).  if i went twenty days past my due date with no end in sight--suffice it to say i can't even imagine that.

so cross your fingers and hope that i don't end up in the cesarean room.  but i trust my doctor a LOT and i think that if i'm bound for an unscheduled cesarean it's going to happen induction or not.  and there's always the chance that i'll go into labor spontaneously before then, so if you picked pre-august 28 in the baby poll, you've still got a fighting chance.  anything post-august 29 and i think you're out of luck.

BUT... dum dum dum... new poll!  how much do you think Kitten will weigh?  closest guess gets a prize!  email me your guesses or leave them in the comments section.

2008 NCAA preseason rankings (aug 17)

direct link

AP:

1. Georgia (22) 0-0 1,528
2. Ohio State (21) 0-0 1,506
3. USC (12) 0-0 1,490
4. Oklahoma (4) 0-0 1,444
5. Florida (6) 0-0 1,415
6. Missouri 0-0 1,266
7. LSU 0-0 1,135
8. West Virginia 0-0 1,116
9. Clemson 0-0 1,105
10. Auburn 0-0 968
11. Texas 0-0 966
12. Texas Tech 0-0 786
13. Wisconsin 0-0 771
14. Kansas 0-0 707
15. Arizona State 0-0 631
16. Brigham Young 0-0 590
17. Virginia Tech 0-0 578
18. Tennessee 0-0 509
19. South Florida 0-0 496
20. Illinois 0-0 483
21. Oregon 0-0 366
22. Penn State 0-0 293
23. Wake Forest 0-0 227
24. Alabama 0-0 89
25. Pittsburgh 0-0 85

i don't know what all those numbers out to the side mean, but i know what four means.  and i know that four beats seven.

"at JFK airport, denying basic rights is just another day at the office"

by emily feder, alternet

august 18, 2008

direct link

I was recently stopped by Homeland Security as I was returning from a trip to Syria. What I saw in the hours that followed shocked and disturbed me.

I arrived at JFK Airport two weeks ago after a short vacation to Syria and presented my American passport for re-entry to the United States. After 28 hours of traveling, I had settled into a hazy awareness that this was the last, most familiar leg of a long journey. I exchanged friendly words with the Homeland Security official who was recording my name in his computer. He scrolled through my passport, and when his thumb rested on my Syrian visa, he paused. Jerking toward the door of his glass-enclosed booth, he slid my passport into a dingy green plastic folder and walked down the hallway, motioning for me to follow with a flick of his wrist. Where was he taking me, I asked him. "You'll find out," he said.

We got to an enclosed holding area in the arrivals section of the airport. He shoved the folder into my hand and gestured toward four sets of Homeland Security guards sitting at large desks. Attached to each desk were metal poles capped with red, white and blue siren lights. I approached two guards carrying weapons and wearing uniforms similar to New York City police officers, but they shook their heads, laughed and said, "Over there," pointing in the direction of four overflowing holding pens. I approached different desks until I found an official who nodded and shoved my green folder in a crowded metal file holder. When I asked him why I was there, he glared at me, took a sip from his water bottle, bit into a sandwich, and began to dig between his molars with his forefinger. I found a seat next to a man who looked about my age -- in his late 20s -- and waited.

Omar (not his real name) finished his fifth year in biomedical engineering at City College in June. He had just arrived from Beirut, where he visited his family and was waiting to go home to the apartment he shared with his brother in Harlem. Despite his near-perfect English and designer jeans, Omar looked scared. He rubbed his hands and rocked softly in his seat. He had been waiting for hours already, and, as he pointed out, a number of people -- some sick, elderly, pregnant or holding sobbing babies -- had too. There were approximately 70 people detained in our cordoned-off section: All were Arab (with the exception of me and the friend I traveled with), and almost all had arrived from Dubai, Amman or Damascus. Many were U.S. citizens.

We were in the front row, sitting a few feet from two guards' desks. They sneered at each bewildered arrival, told jokes in whispers, swiveled in their office chairs and greeted passing guards who stopped to talk -- guards who had a habit of looping their fingers into their holsters. One asked his friend how many nationalities were represented in the room. "About 20. Some of everything today."

No one who had been detained knew precisely why they were there. A few people were led into private rooms; others were questioned out in the open at desks a few feet from the crowd and then allowed to pass through customs. Some were sent to another section of the holding area with large computer screens and cameras, and then brought back. The uninformed consensus among the detainees was that some people would be fingerprinted, have their irises scanned and be sent back to the countries from which they had disembarked, regardless of citizenship status; others would be fingerprinted and allowed to stay; and the unlucky ones would be detained indefinitely and moved to a more permanent facility.

There was one British tourist in the group. Paul (also not his real name) was traveling with three friends who had passed through customs soon after their plane landed and were waiting for him on the other side of the metal barrier; he suspected he had been detained because of his dark skin. When he asked if he could go to the bathroom, one of the guards said, "I wouldn't." "What if someone has to?" I asked. "They will just have to hold it," the guard responded with a smile. Paul began to cry. I watched as he, over the course of four hours, went from feeling exuberant about his trip to New York to despising the entire country. "I speak the Queen's English," he said to me. "I'm third-generation British. I came to America because I've always wanted to come here, and now they've got me so scared that all I want to do is go home. We're paying for your stupid war anyway."

To be powerless and mocked at the same time makes one feel ashamed, which leads quickly to rage. Within a few hours of my arrival, I saw at least 10 people denied the right to use the bathroom or buy food and water. I watched my traveling companion duck under a barrier, run to the bathroom and slip back into the holding section -- which, of course, someone of another ethnicity in a state of panic would be very reluctant to do. The United States is good at naming enemies, but apparently we are even better at making them, especially of individuals. I don't know if it's worse for national security -- and more embarrassing for Americans -- that this is the first experience tourists have of our country, or that some U.S. citizens get treated this way upon entering their own country.

The guard who had been picking his molars for hours quietly mispronounced the names of people whose turn it was to be questioned, muttering each surname three times and then moving on. When he called Omar from City College to his desk, I moved closer to hear the interview. "Where did you go?" the officer asked. "What is your address in the United States? Is your brother here illegally? Do you support Hezbollah? What do you think of Hezbollah in general? How do you pay for your life here? How many people live with you? Are you sure it's just you and your brother? Who are your friends?" Omar answered respectfully and emphatically; he was then asked to wait by the side of the desk, from which he was ushered toward one of the rooms.

After four hours, I finally demanded to speak to the guards' supervisor, and he was called down. I asked if the detainees could file a formal complaint. He said there were complaint forms (which, in English and Spanish, direct one to the Department of Homeland Security's Web site, where one must enter extensive personal information in order to file a "Trip Summary") but initially refused to hand them out or to give me his telephone number. "The Department of Homeland Security is understaffed, underfunded, and I have men here who are doing 14-hour days." He tried to intimidate me when I wrote down his name -- "So, you're writing down our names. Well, we have more on you" -- and asked me questions about my address and my profession in front of the rest of the people detained. I pointed out a few of the families who had missed their flights and had been waiting seven hours. His voice barely controlled, his lip curled into a smirk, he explained slowly, condescendingly, that they need only go to the ticket counter at Jet Blue and reschedule so they could fly out in an hour. One mother responded with what he must have already known: Jet Blue goes to most destinations only once or twice a day and her whole family would have to sleep in the airport.

A large crowd began to gather. Everyone wanted to voice complaints. I explained to the supervisor that his guards had been making people afraid. He flipped through the green files, tossing the American passports to the front of the pile. "You should have gone first, before these people. American citizens first -- that's how it should be." In the face of dozens of requests and questions, he turned and left.

The guards processed me then, ignoring the order of arrivals, if there ever had been one. They refused to distribute more complaint forms or call the supervisor back down at the request of Arab families. One officer threatened, "I'm talking politely to you now. If you don't sit down, I won't be talking politely to you anymore." One announced that because "the American girl" had gotten angry, the families would have to wait a few more hours. "The supervisor is not coming back."

I reassured my Homeland Security interrogator that I did not make any connections with Hezbollah or with anyone I knew to be associated with such an organization. I am not a member of any terrorist group. In fact, my visit to Syria had been so apolitical and touristy that I felt an embarrassing affinity with the pastel-shirted families waiting by the Air France baggage carousels in the distance, whom I knew I would eventually join.

As I walked out of the enclosure, some people thanked me, squeezing my arm and putting their hands on my shoulders. It was shocking that briefly standing up to someone overseeing an abuse of civil rights -- in JFK airport, in the United States, where we supposedly have laws and a democratic judicial system -- could be perceived as heroic. I had nothing to lose, but the other people being detained had everything to lose.

In the past five years I have worked for human rights and refugee advocacy organizations in Serbia, Russia and Croatia, including the International Rescue Committee and USAID. I have traveled to many different places, some supposedly repressive, and have never seen people treated with the kind of animosity that Homeland Security showed that night. In Syria, border control officers were stern but polite. At other borders there have been bureaucracies to contend with -- excruciating for both Americans and other foreign nationals. I've met Russian officials with dead, suspicious looks in their eyes and arms tired from stamping so many visas, but in America, the Homeland Security officials I encountered were very much alive -- like vultures waiting to eat.

can you spot the dog in this photograph?

this is how the dog sleeps.  all the time.  i did not do that to her.  in fact, the blanket and pillows were nicely folded and stacked on top of the sofa.  but she noses and roots around until they fall.  then she dives underneath, pokes her nose out, and starts snoring.

on a related note, this is what the content of my day has been reduced to.  posting photographs of the dog on the couch opposite me.  being on maternity leave with no baby is STAGGERINGLY BORING.  apparently i'm a grass-is-always-greener type of girl.

J is in stillwater for work for a couple of days so i'm going to go crash his hotel room.  i'm so bored that i'm willing to risk Kittin being born in the Land of Orange and Black.  although you better believe if i start having contractions i'll be booking it back to t-town with a quickness.

return policies

i've blogged about this before, but here we go on another round.

last year target changed their returns policy.  you are now allowed only $20 worth of receiptless returns a year.  after that, you are simply stuck with the merchandise.  target suggests that you donate the unwanted items to charity.  store credit and exchanges in excess of $20 per year are not available under any circumstances without a receipt.

as background for those of you who haven't heard this story before, i found this out when Princess received some clothes for her birthday in the wrong size, and target would not allow me to exchange the pieces for the exact same items in one size smaller because i didn't have a receipt from the gift-giver.  no receipt = no refunds, no exchanges, no store credit.  too bad for you.  (now, to be fair, the gift-giver was my sister and i had told her the wrong size.  but that's not the point.)

this extraordinarily customer-hostile policy specifically caused me to NOT create a baby registry at target (even though their stuff was a lot cuter), because i knew if i received duplicates i would be stuck with them.  i know some shower guests provide gift receipts, but the vast majority do not, and i refuse to tastelessly request receipts from otherwise considerate and thoughtful gift-givers. it's tacky and i will not do it.  (several people suggested putting "please include gift receipts" on my baby shower invitations.  WHAT!?!?!?!?  no way!  i wouldn't even include where i was registered on my invitations because that in itself is a breach of etiquette.)

well, today i went into babies r us to exchange some things, and lo and behold, on august 10 they revised their return policy to mimic target's.  no receipt?  we don't want it.  you can't have store credit, you can't exchange it, take it out of here.  if it's an item off your registry, they can try to look up the original transaction by your registry number, but HAHAHA NONE OF THESE THINGS ARE ON MY REGISTRY BECAUSE I DIDN'T WANT THEM!  i guess the joke's on me.

the oh-so-helpful woman at the returns desk said, "well, we handed out fliers about this."  SO TELL ME HOW THAT HELPS ME OUT.  then she told me i needed to contact the people who gave me the items and get receipts from them.  no!  flat. out. no!  stop encouraging this culture of tackiness!  this is particularly unacceptable from a store such as babies r us where a gigantic portion of their sales is generated due to gift-giving and registries.

from a sheerly economic standpoint, tell me how this makes any sense.  two weeks ago before the policy change i returned a bunch of duplicates (unopened, perfect condition), received store credit, and picked out a bunch of stuff i could actually use.  i spent the entire store credit and THEN some.  not only was babies r us not out any money (the cash stayed in their pocket the entire time and i was merely swapping items of equal value), but they MADE money off me coming into the store when i spent extra (which i'm sure to do every time).  what's more, i received rock-bottom store credit prices for everything that had gone on sale or clearance, when it's very likely that the gift-giver paid full price.  babies r us wins!

but now, post-august-10, i'm stuck with a pile of stuff i don't want, and i can't exchange it for stuff i'll use.  this waste of resources is abhorrent to me.  so i'm going to end up donating all of it to the margaret hudson center.  which is ultimately a good result, but i suspect the vast majority of the new policy's victims will end up shoving the stuff in the backs of closets and the bottoms of drawers only to be forgotten or discarded.  what a waste.

the real irony here is that now wal-mart (WAL-MART!) is the only store with an infant department of meaningful size that will offer store credit for receiptless returns and exchanges.  i would have never thought i'd be in wal-mart's corner on ANYTHING, but for today--and today only--i am happy with them.

i may seem hugely ungrateful.  truth is, i am awed by the generosity of my friends, family, and co-workers during this pregnancy.  the gifts have been amazing.  but i am also frugal.  there has to be a balance.  this child does not need sixty size 0-3 month onesies.

mega-chains are increasingly adopting these types of no-receipt-no-luck return policies, and the resulting waste is incredible. don't stand for it! vote with your feet. i am taking down my babies r us registry effective immediately.  i should have never registered at a chain to begin with.  local stores, here i come.

edited to add:  further research reveals that babies-r-us's sister chain, toys-r-us, also now refuses all returns/exchanges without a receipt.  the next time you go to buy a christmas or birthday gift for your favorite little one, please consider shopping locally instead.  lord knows autumn's got too much stuff in her room, the last thing she needs is duplicate or unwanted toys that we can't return.  it's hard enough teaching her to understand why she has to give to goodwill each year before her birthday and christmas.  

and i'll save the "educational toys and activity-based gifts vs. piles of ornately packaged plastic" rant for another day.

Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

By Nina Bernstein

New York Times, August 12, 2008

Direct Link

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system.

Mr. Ng’s death follows a succession of cases that have drawn Congressional scrutiny to complaints of inadequate medical care, human rights violations and a lack of oversight in immigration detention, a rapidly growing network of publicly and privately run jails where the government held more than 300,000 people in the last year while deciding whether to deport them.

In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation.

Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation.

“For this desperately sick, vulnerable person, this was torture,” said Theodore N. Cox, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, adding that they want to see a videotape of the transport made by guards.

Immigration and detention officials would not discuss the case, saying the matter was under internal investigation. But in response to a relative of Mr. Ng’s who had begged that he be checked for a spinal injury or fractures, the Wyatt detention center’s director of nursing, Ben Candelaria, replied in a July 16 e-mail message that Mr. Ng was receiving appropriate care for “chronic back pain.” He added, “We treat each and every detainee in our custody with the same high level of quality, professional care possible.”

Officials have given no explanation why they took Mr. Ng to Hartford and back on the same day. But the lawyers say the grueling July 30 trip appeared to be an effort to prove that Mr. Ng was faking illness, and possibly to thwart the habeas corpus petition they had filed in Rhode Island the day before, seeking his release for medical treatment.

The federal judge who heard that petition on July 31 did not make a ruling, but in an unusual move insisted that Mr. Ng get the care he needed. On Aug. 1, Mr. Ng was taken to a hospital, where doctors found he had terminal cancer and a fractured spine. He died five days later.

The accounts of Mr. Ng’s treatment echo other cases that have prompted legislation, now before the House Judiciary Committee, to set mandatory standards for care in immigration detention.

In March, the federal government admitted medical negligence in the death of Francisco Castaneda, 36, a Salvadoran whose cancer went undiagnosed in a California detention center as he was repeatedly denied a biopsy on a painful penile lesion. In May, The New York Times chronicled the death of Boubacar Bah, 52, a Guinean tailor who suffered a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages in the Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey; records show he was left in an isolation cell without treatment for more than 13 hours.

When Mr. Ng died last week, he had spent half his life in the United States, his sister, Wendy Zhao, said in a tearful interview.

Born in China, he entered the United States legally on a tourist visa. Mr. Ng stayed on after it expired and applied for political asylum. He was granted a work permit while his application was pending, and though asylum was eventually denied, immigration authorities did not seek his deportation for many years.

Meanwhile, his sister said, Mr. Ng (pronounced Eng), who was known as Jason, graduated from high school in Long Island City, Queens, worked his way through community technical college, passed Microsoft training courses and won a contract to provide computer services to a company with offices in the Empire State Building.

In 2001, a notice ordering him to appear in immigration court was mistakenly sent to a nonexistent address, records show. When Mr. Ng did not show up at the hearing, the judge ordered him deported. By then, however, he was getting married, and on a separate track, his wife petitioned Citizenship and Immigration Services for a green card for him — a process that took more than five years. Heeding bad legal advice, the couple showed up for his green card interview on July 19, 2007, only to find enforcement agents waiting to arrest Mr. Ng on the old deportation order.

Over the next year, while his family struggled to pay for new lawyers to wage a complicated and expensive legal battle, Mr. Ng was held in jails under contract to the federal immigration authorities: Wyatt; the House of Correction in Greenfield, Mass.; and the Franklin County Jail in St. Albans, Vt.

Mr. Ng seemed healthy until April, his sister said, when he began to complain of severe back pain and skin so itchy he could not sleep. He was then in the Vermont jail, a 20-bed detention center with no medical staff run by the county sheriff’s office. Seeking care, he asked to be transferred back to Wyatt, a 700-bed center with its own medical staff, owned and operated by a municipal corporation.

In a letter to his sister, Mr. Ng recounted arriving there on July 3, spending the first three days in pain in a dark isolation cell. Later he was assigned an upper bunk and required to climb up and down at least three times a day for head counts, causing terrible pain. His brother-in-law B. Zhao appealed for help in e-mail messages to the warden, Wayne Salisbury, on July 11 and 16.

“I was really heartbroken when I first saw him,” Mr. Zhao wrote Mr. Salisbury after a visit. “After almost two weeks of suffering with unbearable back pain and unable to get any sleep, he was so weak and looked horrible.”

The nursing director replied that Mr. Ng had been granted a bottom bunk and was receiving painkillers and muscle relaxants prescribed by a detention center doctor.

But his condition continued to deteriorate. Once a robust man who stood nearly six feet and weighed 200 pounds, his relatives said, Mr. Ng looked like a shrunken and jaundiced 80-year-old.

“He said, ‘I told the nursing department, I’m in pain, but they don’t believe me,’ ” his sister recalled. “ ‘They tell me, stop faking.’ ”

Soon, according to court papers, he had to rely on other detainees to help him reach the toilet, bring him food and call his family; he no longer received painkillers, because he could not stand in line to collect them. On July 26, Andy Wong, a lawyer associated with Mr. Cox, came to see the detainee, but had to leave without talking to him, he said, because Mr. Ng was too weak to walk to the visiting area, and a wheelchair was denied.

On July 30, according to an affidavit by Mr. Wong, he was contacted by Larry Smith, a deportation officer in Hartford, who told him on a speakerphone, with Mr. Ng present, that he wanted to resolve the case, either by deporting Mr. Ng, or “releasing him to the streets.” Officer Smith said that no exam by an outside doctor would be allowed, and that Mr. Ng would not be given a wheelchair.

Mr. Ng told his lawyer he was ready to give up, the affidavit said, “because he could no longer withstand the suffering inside the facility,” but Officer Smith insisted that Mr. Ng would first have to withdraw all his appeals.

The account of his treatment clearly disturbed the federal judge, William E. Smith of United States District Court in Providence, who instructed the government’s lawyer the next day to have the warden get Mr. Ng to the hospital for an M.R.I.

The results were grim: cancer in his liver, lungs and bones, and a fractured spine. “ ‘I don’t have much time to live,’ ” his sister said he told her in a call from Rhode Island Hospital in Providence.

She said the doctor warned that if the family came to visit, immigration authorities might transfer her brother. Three days passed before the warden approved a family visit, she said, after demanding their Social Security numbers. Late in the afternoon of Aug. 5, as Mr. Ng lay on a gurney, hours away from death and still under guard, she and his wife held up his sons, 3 and 1.

“Brother, don’t worry, don’t be afraid,” Ms. Zhao said, repeating her last words to him. “They are not going to send you back to the facility again. Brother, you are free now.”

progress

i saw the doctor today.  i'm 1 centimeter dilated and 50% effaced.  which i was happy to hear, because i've been having light contractions at night, so i was hoping i'd made a little progress.

could be any time!

or could be another month.

the topic for next thursday's doctor's appointment: induction.

jeebus.

not as in homer simpson.  as in "gbs."  group b strep.  which i'm sure you know nothing about unless you've been pregnant in the last ten years since they started testing for it.

anyhoo, gbs is a harmless bacteria that people carry from time to time.  it comes and goes and causes no symptoms in healthy adults, but it can be passed to an infant during delivery so they test expectant mothers for it toward the end of their pregnancies to see if they're carriers at that time.

well, guess what.  i tested positive.  yay freaking hooray.  this means i get to be on antibiotics until the baby's born.  

i love antibiotics.  i think they are really great and i take them as often as possible because i think they're useful for all sorts of things, like allergies and the common cold.  i keep half-full bottles of them in my medicine cabinet and every time i'm feeling under the weather i'll take them for a day or two and they make everything go away because they're Magic Pills.  and who cares about superbugs because as long as *i'm* feeling better then the rest of humanity really doesn't matter, it's not like one person is going to make that big of a difference.  so taking penicillin four times a day for the next month is just peachy with me.

now re-read that last paragraph out loud with biting sarcasm while rolling your eyes.

i am incredibly annoyed.  i picked up my prescription and then went straight to whole foods and got a great big jar of plain acidophilus yogurt.

but wait!  there's more!  what's worse than what seems to be this incredible amount of oral antibiotics? now, when i go into labor, they have to hook me up to an IV and give me MORE antibiotics intravenously.  i had hoped to labor as long as possible at home before going to the hospital, and i also wanted to avoid an IV until it was time for my epidural, but now none of that is going to be possible.  once i go into labor, i have to be on the IV.  and once my water breaks, the clock starts ticking, and i will have a limited amount of time to progress before they whisk me off to be sectioned.

my morale is low.  i am eleventeen months pregnant and i had three separate strangers comment today on how enormous i am and this baby seems quite content to stick around for another three or four weeks at least.  CONTRACTIONS CAN I HAVE SOME PLEASE KTHXBAI. 

my muscles are tired of carrying around all this extra weight and the hormones are causing my bones to shift, and it hurts.  no one told me how sore i'd be.

it is a major ordeal to get out of bed each of the thirty-four times a night that i have to get up.

i groan.  a lot.

and whine.

poor J.

that's all.

tell congress: rein in dhs travel abuses

by the American Civil Liberties Union
Direct Link

"With no suspicion and no explanation, the U.S. government can seize your laptop, cell phone, or PDA as you enter the United States and download all your private information -- including your personal and business documents, emails, phone calls, and web history. The Department of Homeland Security confirms that this is the official policy.

What happens if you refuse to let the agents download your personal photos? Or if you have encrypted your private information? Then Border Patrol -- which is now an agency of the Department of Homeland Security -- can simply copy your entire hard drive or even take your device and hang on to it indefinitely.

Unfortunately, seizing laptops and cameras at the border isn’t the only travel security measure that infringes on our civil liberties.

Just last month, the U.S. government's "terrorist watch list" surpassed one million names and is growing by over twenty-thousand names per month. The watch list includes the names of prominent people, like Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA), plus hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans -- many of them with common names like Robert Johnson and James Robinson. Your name might be on the list, but there's no way to know for sure until you are delayed -- or even detained for hours in a back room. If you discover your name is on the list, it's nearly impossible to get off. It actually took an Act of Congress to get Nelson Mandela off the list. No joke. An Act of Congress.

These abuses have something in common: They make all of us into suspects, with no rule of law and no accountability ... And recently, the TSA expressed interest in having every traveler wear an "electro-muscular disruption" bracelet that airline personnel or marshals could use to shock passengers into submission. Unless something is done, this plan may not be as far-fetched as one would think."

***

tell Congress to back off.  and congratulate me for making it on to the terrorist watch list by posting that ACLU link.  

oh, i kid, i kid. 

anyway, i'm virtually certain i'm already on there.  after all, i've enrolled in anti-death-penalty courses, and to make matters worse, i'm a democrat.  i voted for john! kerry!  you guys should just stop associating with me altogether before barack saddam hussein osama gets elected and we're all forced to start reading the koran.

there's always a period of curious fear between the first sweet-smelling breeze and the time when the rain comes cracking down. ~don delillo

it's been so long that the dog doesn't even know what to do.

evidence of the ginormousness

(a.k.a. melissa at 35 weeks)

taken just moments ago with the webcam on my macbook. 

yes, i know that's a horrible sack of a dress, but i dare you to try to come between me and comfort.

i am on maternity leave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so no more thinking about work.  thank god.

Kitten update:  my blood pressure is still kind of iffy so they're keeping an eye on me and requesting that i stay down as much as possible.  and i'm freaking exhausted, so i went ahead and went on full-time maternity leave.  i'm SO over work at this point.  being eleventy months pregnant saps ALL of the ambition right out of you.

AND i've been having insomnia for the first time ever in my life.  i lie there in bed thinking about all the things i need to get done.  last night, after lieing in bed for two hours to no avail, i finally got up and grabbed a notebook and started making check lists.  it's like mental nesting.  and i hate the word "nesting."  

next week we have an ultrasound on monday to make sure Kitten's tolerating the stress okay.  it's a biophysical profile ("BPP"), and they will check her breathing, muscle tone/movement, heart rate, and amount of amniotic fluid.  everything should be fine, we're just being extra cautious.  and also, yay i get to have another ultrasound!  i wasn't expecting to have any more.

my next doctor's appointment is next thursday - we're to the once-a-week appointments now.  looks like she's weighing about 5lbs at this point.  i need to make it through the next two weeks to let her put on a little more weight, and after that, LET'S GO!  he'll induce me if my blood pressure gets too high or if i request it, and otherwise we'll just wait and see if she decides to make an appearance.  

but let me tell you - i'm not waiting very long.  the highs for the weekend are in the 102-103 range.  forgeeeeet that.