the spit

A Taboo Sort of Rambling

2012-02-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

I have dear friends who have kids and dear friends who don't. Our interactions and conversations are so different and yet so important to who I am and, also, to how I raise my kids.

I had lunch with a friend who doesn't have kids a few weeks back and I must have voiced some complaint about being tired or the kids driving me crazy or something because she looked at me and asked, "Do you like having kids?"

I was silent for a moment. Yes. I like having kids, I said. But, honestly, I often feel totally unequipped to be raising kids, and it is tiring to do so much of it on our own, and sometimes I despair. We have friends who are amazing parents and we frequently lack their patience, resolve, and resources. It is hard not to feel envious and ill-prepared. But sometimes we do alright, and the incredible times--the times when your heart is filled with love to bursting, or when you can pause and just enjoy these incredible people-in-becoming, or when your house is filled with excitement, laughter, joy, play... those times certainly outnumber and outweigh the difficult times. And, I added, thinking of my pat line in these cases, being a parent has grown me up a lot.

I don't know about that response, my friend said, truthfully. Does that mean I'm not grown up?

I laughed. Well, I said, you were more grown up at fifteen than I was at thirty. So I'd say in your case, no. I was a late bloomer. And I think, personality-wise, I tend to be particularly selfish and self-involved. Having kids has forced me a little out of that. Or maybe not that much (see hoarding of Kindle Fire).

But maybe I didn't mean to say that kids have "grown me up" at all. I think what I mean to say is that it gives you a taste of a subject position that you otherwise just don't have, even as a caring Auntie, partner, or friend involved in little people's lives. This has nothing to do with maturity, after all, but it does allow you another turn of the kaleidoscope.

I think that our primary subject position for much of our lives is as child. Our experience of and perspective on parenting, largely, is shaped by our own experiences as a child of parents. We may have experiences of our parents as loving, judgmental, distant, sick, supportive, successful, absent, or any other number of combinations, perceived, real, and otherwise, but when we think about the parent/child dynamic, it is largely our experience as the child that determines how we think about parenting and being parents.

I don't mean to say the child subject position is immature or undeveloped. I don't mean "child" as in "little one," but rather as offspring in relationship to "parent." This also doesn't mean our views on parenting or parents don't have consequence--they have tremendous consequence. Some of you remind me that I must see my children as people in their own right and not simply as "mine," for one thing, and for that I am seriously grateful, and always think hard about our conversations after. I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Still.

Perhaps I'm simply deepening the defensiveness and angst that exists between those who have kids and those who don't by writing this. I know it is hard for those who have chosen to be kid-free to always have to say, "I know I'm not a parent, but..." and to be heard in a non-defensive way. I know terms like "childless" or even referring to you as "without kids" lacks sensitivity and emphasizes what one doesn't have instead of what one does. Parents can also be smug in their child-ful-ness, and self-obsessed, and martyr-like. I also know, as a parent, that sometimes advice from the kid-free lacks sensitivity and understanding as well. It can be full of smug judgment, too. I may also resent your ability to drop a bomb about how I'm raising my kids and then go back to your clean, quiet, house and watch t.v. all night, uninterrupted, and without smeared peanut butter on your jammy pants (unless you put it there). We all make our choices. The opportunities for resentment, misunderstanding, and conflict abound. And still so much goes unsaid.

What I'm trying to say is I think one of the by-products of our subject position as children is that we locate a lot of who we are now in the decisions our parents made. This part of me comes from the things that happened to me as a child, and so on. I do this. You do this. It's part of making sense of who we are as adults. This doesn't mean we don't take responsibility for our choices and who we are, but I think, as children, the scale tips toward attributing much of who we are to the way we were raised.

But then we might deliberately choose to have kids, or just have them without thinking much about the choice (which is what E. and I did), or have them on accident. Then we are introduced to a new subject position: that of the parent. All of a sudden, at least in my case, you begin to see the parent-child dynamic, at least in the abstract, in a new light. You have moments when you are exhausted, sick, grumpy, and do shitty, shitty things as a parent. You respond in a mean way to a tired or sick kid, or you collapse in a pile of tears because you just don't know how to handle your sassy, misbehaving, or criminal teenager anymore. You screw up and choose the wrong school for them, or you introduce them to a neighbor who molests them, or you shut down and forget to show them how to feel their feelings. You do permanent damage. You work hard to do things better than your parents did, but find out so much is out of your control, and trying to hold on to control only backfires. You are constantly dealing with your own profound and particular bullshit. You are terrified of projecting it on to your little ones. You figure out that your kids are their own little selves and sometimes you're just there to guide and support them, not make everything right for them. Which leads you to see that some of that must also have been true for you growing up. Which leads you to revisit some of the resentments you might hold as a child toward your parents, and maybe some of your pedestalizing, too.

All those "you's" should be "I's," of course.

Perhaps this is a false dichotomy. My friends who don't have kids have wisdom to share, and remind me frequently of what it is like to be the child (not because they are immature or child-like, but because they remember that as their primary subject position better, perhaps). They return me to sensitivity and love. They help remind me of the care I must express, of the great impact I can have on my kids' lives, of where I must fight and grow and reflect.

My friends with kids remind me of when I have to let go of control because my holding tight is squeezing the life out of things. They remind me to laugh and not take things so seriously. They occasionally ply me with wine and help me to unclench. They help me not feel so tired and old. They remind me that I will make mistakes no matter what and that there is no perfect.

I need both. I love you both.

What do you think? Do I have it wrong?

Practical Meditation

2012-01-31T17:54:00.000-08:00

You all know that I've been interested in meditation for a long time, and have had some interesting experiences meditating (like that time when my limbs got all expansive and universal-like. That was better than shrooms. Not that I know what shrooms are like, dear tenure committee members and law-enforcing-type officials and taxpayers and older family members reading this blog).

But, frankly, I've not ever been able to keep up meditation as a daily practice. Certainly, I have done things that approximated it: daily spiritual reading, some chanting here and there. And I think running can be pretty meditative. Still, there has been no daily sitting down and quieting of the mind, even though I've needed it. Oh, I'd try. I'd sit for a few minutes and then feel really, really called to pop a load of laundry in the washer. Or I'd get all anxious and need to do some online shopping. So it seemed sort of counter-productive all in all. I didn't know for how long to sit or why or anything like that. It just was too hard to make it a daily practice.

Then, when I had my mini-meltdown in San Diego (which maybe was not so mini. Maybe more of the life-changing variety) I had that phone conversation with N., which she probably thought was kind of inconsequential but was actually really, really important (she's always doing that to/for me, as best friends do) and she asked if I could go meditate to get a handle on the freak-out. I think I tearfully responded uh-huh, but the answer really should have been nuh-uh, because I wouldn't have known how and it probably would have freaked me out even more to try in that moment.

There isn't really a knowing how to meditate, you say. You just get quiet and let the thoughts go by.

Yes.

But I need more help than that. I'm a first-world bozo. You'll see.

Anyway, N.'s question rang in my head for a while, and I wondered if one of the things I really needed to figure out how to do was to sit and be quiet with myself for a while and quit running away so much.

Happily, this budding awareness of my need to start meditating coincided with my getting this Christmas present from my grandma:

That, in case you don't know, is a Kindle Fire. Or a Kindle Fire in its little cover, at least. Ruby saw a commercial for it a few weeks before Christmas and asked me if I wanted one for the family and I said yes and she sent me the money for it and then it became mine because it's the best present I've ever had and I love it and use it all the time and I don't want anyone else to have it because it has changed my life.

I'm selfish that way.

Don't tell Grandma.

So, the Fire is awesome for so many reasons. It can pay music from Amazon's cloud, where we have uploaded more than 5,000 songs from our collection. It can play movies and t.v. shows streaming from Amazon's excellent collection, which fills in holes Netflix has. I'm watching The Tudors at the moment, which is like porn, set in the 16th century. All those loose and flowy nightgowns. Totally awesome.

The Fire can play stuff from Netflix, it can access email if you like, it's got all the Droid apps. It directly connects to your Amazon account, and I know this makes me a corporate shill. So be it. It has all of my books and magazines. I can catch up on all my blogs via google reader. It's friendly and sweet and unassuming and easy to use it and I love it. It was only $200, too. Jesus. That's less than a coat from Boden.

But my favorite thing is the Insight Meditation Center app:

It allows you to design preset meditation times. It has specialized gongs to remind you to return to your breath, and different gongs to let you know you're done. It even shows you who else is meditating around the world when you are.

All the wind up for that. A lame plug for an app. Sorry. You're terribly underwhelmed, I can tell. But I'm overwhelmed, because this thing has me meditating every day, and it's so easy and delightful. It's my wee technological meditation crutch, but it's profoundly good medicine.

This post is already too long, so I'll talk about the benefits I'm seeing from the actual meditation later, and why maybe this time is different from the other times I got all worked up about meditation. But if you've thought about meditating, would like to try it...I don't know. There's an app for that.

Ew. Sorry. Had to do it.

The Noles

2012-01-28T15:20:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems that Nolie may have a little bit of test anxiety. Good thing to know. Our county GT office retested her this week using a different test, one that works better for kids with test anxiety and which is a bit more oriented toward kinesthetic learning, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, she's in. I'm glad, on a lot of levels.

Thanks for all the love and support and arguments and laughs as we figured this thing out.

Regarding my secret fear of moderately empty refrigerators, and also overly crowded, disorganized refrigerators.

2012-01-27T15:37:00.000-08:00

You know how we've been trying to save money, mostly because we were not saving money there for a while and things got out of whack? We're pretty much back in the black now, but took a hard look at how we'd been spending money. As a result, we've gone through some major changes in the last month or so. It paid off: we paid off the residuals from the credit cards, made some lifestyle changes, and everything is looking up.

Here's what we did:

First, I stopped buying clothes. Let's be honest: I had a new-clothing addiction there for a while. I spent plenty of our hard-earned money buying myself a whole new wardrobe this last year. Yes, it was stuff that was on sale, and yes, I really enjoy the clothes. But it was out of hand and needed to be nipped in the bud.

That addiction got replaced with my new meditation addiction, but that's for an upcoming post (promise).

Second, we agreed to cancel the cable. This isn't going to save us a ton of money, but let me tell you, it has opened up veritable chasms of time in my schedule. I read every night now, with a cup of tea. I read in the morning. I read in the interstices of my day. It's not that I wasn't reading before, but boy, making the mental switch away from my tv addiction triggered a desire in me to read and do other stuff, like exercise. This is pretty awesome.

But I should say goodbye to my friends: goodbye, Kim, Kortney, Khloe. Goodbye Snooki, the Situation. I'll miss you.

Nother good by-product: watching tv can't trigger my desire to shop. Good.

Third, we just got a whole lot more careful about incidental spending. I tried to make most birthday gifts this month; we didn't eat out; we talked over every purchase. This helped a lot, and is a habit I think we'll keep up with.

Fourth, we agreed that our grocery budget was out of whack. I'm about to blow your freaking mind. Are you ready? We spent on average $1000 a month on groceries. Sometimes more.

Okay, pick up the pieces of your brain and join me again when you've reassembled.

I know! I know! I can't believe it myself. I'm ashamed and embarrassed and confused. I mean, we make almost every meal at home rather than eat out, so that's part of it. I try to buy organic produce when I can (especially with those rascals, apples). We like good cheddar. But I don't know where the hell else the rest of it goes, honestly.

In an effort to cut that budget dramatically this month (we were shooting for $600 but I think hit more like $700) we made two big shopping trips and then agreed to eat from the pantry. We had a fair amount stocked up in terms of pastas and canned tomatoes and all that Costco-overflow-jazz, so it didn't seem that hard. At first.

And for most of the time, it was fun. It was fun figuring out how to be creative just with what we had. It was nice to use up food we had bought rather than throw it away or watch it get all dusty.

But for the last ten days or so, our refrigerator has looked like this:

Now, maybe you look at this fridge and see plenty. Maybe you think I'm having a "first world problem." Maybe you want me to shut my freaking pie-hole.

But I look at this fridge, and I see three half-jars of salsa, a few stalks of kale that I ran out and bought on Tuesday in a frenzied pique as my body demanded fresh greens, a ginormous tub of fake butter (we've had it for three years. I'm not kidding. Totally disgusting), and a pitcher of watered-down juice. And I'm thinking, "How in god's name am I going to feed a family of four on this shit? Somebody tell me HOW I'M GOING TO FEED A FAMILY OF FOUR WITH MARGARINE AND WILTED KALE, MOTHER FUCKERS!!!!.

If you post a comment with a recipe for fried kale and apple sauce, I will punch you in the throat.

Good thing it's the end of the month and I have special dispensation to go to the market this weekend, even if it means we go a tiny bit into the red until our paychecks show up on Monday.

But let me tell you, it has been interesting to observe myself trying not to freak out about having an empty larder. And it has been interesting to observe myself freaking out about not having fresh produce and lots of choices, cooking-wise. And it has been interesting to reflect on my parents' huge walk-in pantry and costco-sized refrigerator, filled with more food than two people could ever eat even if peak oil hits and boatloads of hungry refugees buy out everything in the grocery store and my parents are stuck living off their pantry for a year.

Not saying this has anything to do with them. I take responsibility for my own refrigerator-induced neuroses. That image of their giant, walk-in pantry and overflowing fridge has just crossed my mind a few times as I've been thinking about my relationship with scarcity and plenty and blessings and fear, that's all.

Here's the cool thing: I will be very, very excited to go grocery shopping tomorrow, and I will feel very grateful for every recipe I get to cook this next week. That's for sure.

Weekend Honors

2012-01-23T07:30:00.000-08:00

On Thursday morning, we attended a breakfast honoring Addie as one of her school's "top" students for the month of February. I was so proud, hearing the words the principal said about her (and that her teacher wrote):

I love that she is a "mathematical whiz" and a "super reader," but am especially proud that she is kind and peaceful.

Friday, I was honored to be included in a ladies-only weekend in the mountains. A friend turned 40, and her husband secretly flew in all of her best friends, from every stage of her life, to celebrate it with her in a cabin in Winter Park. How amazing to be included, and to meet seven instant new friends.

And how lucky I am to have a husband who entertained and loved on my girls all weekend, cleaned the house, did laundry, and cheerfully let me take a 3-hour nap when I got home yesterday.

Speaking of coming home, I arrived to this:

Which meant also that Nolie brought home her class's honored stuffed animal, Cayden. She got to take care of him all weekend, do fun things with him, and write stories about him.

Not to mention the two glowing report cards that came home, too.

I'm a proud mama.

The MLK Song

2012-01-16T17:05:00.000-08:00

1. It was hard to video this without shooting any little girl boobies, but I wanted to avoid doing that because you're all such a bunch of pervs.

2. I like how our bathroom tiles look in this shoot.

3. This song neither rhymes, has a melody, nor is it maybe that historically or factually accurate in some ways. It's pretty non-linear, really. But I still really, really like it.

So, from Nolie to you, on this fine MLK Day:

The GT Dilemma

2012-01-09T18:25:00.000-08:00

Once again, the gifted and talented program in our county has presented us with a dilemma.

Namely, that Nolie didn't get in.

She doesn't know this yet, so if you're someone who sees her, or has a kid who sees her, please don't say anything.

Her test scores weren't bad by any means, but they were pretty blah across the board.

I think I can speak for E. when I say our first reaction was, CRAP. Not because we are so in love with GT or anything, or think our kid won't be successful without it, but because her very vocal older sister is in GT, and thinks the world of it, and CRAP will Nolie think that she's not the gifted or talented one in the family? That she is something other that smart and lovely and a gift to everyone who meets her?

CRAP.

Also, it's confusing, seeing as Nolie is doing really well in school, and her teachers are having to work hard to challenge her in math and reading. So did she just have a couple of off-days of testing? Or does the testing not capture all kinds of giftedness (know the answers to that one)? Is she just not ready for that kind of testing?

Biggest question of all: what to do now?

Gather information about our options. Get some resources on how to deal with this kind of situation. Maybe advocate for a retest. We don't quite know yet.

I'm not a fan of moments like this, where there is no clear path forward, and you have to be careful that your actions and attitudes aim for what's best for your kid and aren't just a reflection of your own fears and insecurities as a parent.

I think Nolie would do great in a GT classroom. But I also know she's smart, funny, resilient, loving, and basically all-around awesome. And I'll need to be all of those things, too, so I can always be her best parent, coach, advocate, and ally, reminding her that she is gifted and talented, no matter what any test says, or how her classroom is labeled.

Crap.

Addie Sees

2012-01-09T18:13:00.000-08:00

Addie royally failed her vision screening at school a few weeks back. E. had been suspecting for a while that her vision wasn't good and, in fact, it's worse than both of ours. Her optometrist said that if she were an adult, she'd be forbidden from driving without glasses.

Kind of explains why she has insisted on being so close to the t.v. screen, and why she's had trouble seeing the smartboard at school. Might also explain some of her ongoing clumsiness. We'll see.

Anyway, her glasses were finally ready today. Lord, how she's been waiting. E. said she got them and put them on and the first thing she said was, "These make my life so much better."

That's pretty awesome.

Course, we had to stop by Claire's and get Nolie her very own pair for $2.99.

I'm worried about Addie's glasses getting lost or broken. I'm hoping that her being able to see will be enough incentive for her to take care of them. But if you have any suggestions for how to get your kid to take care of their glasses, please let me know.

Rolling Coins

2012-01-09T18:08:00.000-08:00

We have this plastic jug that's about 12 inches tall. It used to be part of a Hello Kitty water dispenser, but E.'s mom rightly pointed out a while back that it was probably full of BPA, so we converted into a loose change collector. That was years ago, and the jug just recently got super-full. I was going to take it to our grocery store and dump the thing into a CoinStar machine, but then I remembered reading a blog post one time about how this was basically throwing money away because CoinStar keeps a percentage of your coins just for counting them, and also you have no way of knowing if they count correctly. I also remember rolling coins as a kid with my brother, and that we enjoyed doing that. So when we were at the bank last week I asked for some coin rolls and they gave us a stack.

I proposed to the family that we roll the coins and that we use half of the total money on a gift for ourselves--maybe a new Play Station game, or a night out eating--and that we all agree on a charity to give the other half to.

Here's why I like the exercise from a parenting angle:

We give the kids allowance every week (when we can remember), but if the girls don't put the coins into their piggy banks immediately, they get strewn about the house like play money. Appropriate for Nolie's age, probably, but not for Addie's. Addie has really strong saving instincts already, so I want to nurture that. Both girls have savings accounts for birthday money and saved allowance, and we also allow them to buy things on occasion.

But neither really understands that actual, physical money translates into purchasing power. So my hope is that, over time, as they help me count and roll these coins, and then we both purchase something with it and give some away to others, they'll start to connect the fact of coins and its value as currency. Maybe also they'll learn about spending and giving? Then, maybe, they'll pick up a penny and deposit into the BPA jar instead of just throwing it around or leaving it on the ground.

Because you know what? Those coins add up. We're only 1/3 of the way through the jar and we've got $44. That's a lot! Ostensibly by the end we could have around $150, which translates into a couple of dinners at Noodles for all of us, and $75 to give to an organization we choose.

This may not mean a lot to them now, but my hope is it grows on them over time. Maybe wishful thinking. Especially seeing as "real" money doesn't seem to have tons of value now that everything's plasticized. But I can hope.

An OCD side benefit: your fingers get disgustingly dirty from rolling coins, so maybe they'll learn not to put that shit in their mouths.

Another OCD benefit: all those similarly shaped round things neatly stacked. Very nice. So soothing.

12 Wishes

2012-01-03T15:39:00.000-08:00

Did the 12 wishes a little late this year. But that's just fine with me.

Here are last year's:

Good wishes, all. Just re-entered a good gratitude practice, where I send myself off to sleep reviewing the day and feeling grateful for every bit of it, even the slow or rotten parts. So that's made a comeback. Definitely made a lot of mistakes, though they only seem wonderful in hindsight. I failed some at spending on experiences, not things, as you know. But I continue that good fight.

I definitely wasn't like Milo most of the time, though I do think I did more relaxing and playing this year than in years past, and that was a great good thing. I definitely had lots of wonderful and unexpected moments and surprises. I did a much better job of putting family first (though maybe I should double-check that with them!).

My spiritual practices were not as strong in the second half of the year, though I'm headlong thrown back in those at the moment, and boy are my eyes getting opened to some things I maybe didn't want to know about myself, let me tell you. But there's also been a lot of sweet, soft grace, too.

Lots of wonderful laughter this year. Many hallowed moments. Lots of fearful times, but some times when I practiced letting go, too. Need to work on building that muscle, for sure. And plenty of saying yes, though unfortunately I said yes to a few things I don't love, and am dealing with some of that fallout right this very day, sigh, sigh.

And here are this year's:

1. Review each day with gratitude.
2. Be deliberate when making choices.
3. Celebrate your life.
4. Open up--you are not the only one who struggles.
5. Keep running (physically, not metaphorically!).
6. Make your own rules.
7. Make peace with your feelings.
8. Meditate.
9. Stay in this moment more.
10. Be kind first.
11. Focus on richness, not riches.
12. Simplify.

Cliches, all, but good things to practice and aim for, I think. I'll have a hard time with that kind one, I can tell you that, since I have a pretty bad sniper habit in place, and for some reason it's always hard for me to maintain a long-term meditation practice. It's all just a reminder of how to live and be, anyway, right? There's no waking up into enlightenment tomorrow morning. Unless there is. But probably it will just be the same old effort to live a life in line with what feels good and with what I value.

A New Year

2012-01-01T13:01:00.000-08:00

I was talking to my mom this morning, and she said she hadn't liked 2011 that much--there was just a lot of bad news, she thought. I can understand her sentiment, though also I don't think my mom has had what she might consider a "good" year in a long time. I'm not sure what would be a good year, actually--probably not having so many health problems, and maybe being more financially secure.

But I also know a little bit what she means. We were doing highs and lows around the dinner table last night, except of instead of talking about our highs and lows for the day we did them for the year. Not an easy task, both because it's hard to remember everything that happened over a year and because it occurred to me that it was sort of a difficult year. There were many blessings and wonderful highlights, but also some struggles.

I may futz with these as I remember things and reflect more. But without further ado, my highs and lows for 2011 are as follows:

Highs

My family. My girls are here with me, and so is my husband. Most important thing.

My health. I had some hiccups here and there but all and all it was a really healthy year.

My job. All around me, all around the world, people are struggling with losing their jobs. Apart from one fairly big oops at work I never really questioned my job security. And most days I'm happy to go to my office, to teach, to write.

Amazing, delightful, fun- and laughter-filled trips to Monterey, Logan, Bogota, and Kentucky. What dear friends I made on these trips, and the laugh attacks were delightful. Some of my favorite memories are lying on the deck in Logan in the early morning while a hundred bats swooped and dove over my head; skinny dipping (well, almost) in a high mountain lake, and falling on my ass on the hike up there; dancing until late into the night in Bogota, and witnessing the kindness of strangers; tramping around with some amazing sloats in Monterey, drinking wine that tasted like feet; running 200 miles across the Bourbon Trail with some of the funniest and best-natured people I've met. God, just writing this, I'm smiling and feeling incredibly lucky.

Learning how to run. This fall, I ran 2 half-marathons, a 10K, and a 200-mile relay. I stopped running a bit after Thanksgiving but am back at it. Every time I head outside or step on the treadmill I know that I'm going to feel strong and relaxed for the rest of the day because of it. I still hate it sometimes. I still have terrible runs. I'm still slow. I still puke after every race. But I love it, and I'll do it as long as I can. I hope 2012 brings more half-marathons, and maybe even in a few years I'll do the long one. We'll see.

My children being at the same school. Even though it stinks to have to drive them half-way across town most days, we have a home at our school now, and my girls are really happy in their classes. They love their teachers and have good friends.

My beautiful friends, spirit teachers, guides, and adopted family. I'm so grateful for these wacky ladies in my neighborhood, who support me in this mothering adventure like no others; for all of the sisters and aunties, steadfast and hearts bursting with kindness and support; for the dozens of lunches and cocktail hours and hugs and books and music and crying and celebrations and love and love and love. I am so, so rich.

My students and coworkers, who have challenged me, pushed me, made me laugh, taught me, and encouraged me to show up and give as much as I can to my work every day. They were also very, very patient with my idiosyncracies and bizarrerie.

And, of course, Boden's fall line of corduroy dresses was a significant high in my life. Long live the Brits.

Lows

My grandma Muggs passed. I'm glad she didn't linger and suffer for a long time, and that she was surrounded by people she loved when she passed. But I wish that I had seen her more before she went, and I wish that I could have spent more time with that side of the family at her funeral.

My grandma June almost dying, several times, and seeing her deteriorate quite a bit as time passes.

The health struggles of friends and family. My mom and stepdad haven't improved much (though stasis is okay), and several friends continue to struggle with illnesses or injuries. Their struggles aren't my struggles, I get it. But still I ache for them and wish them wellness.

Having to fight to be paid as much as male colleagues at work, and falling just short of the mark despite my best efforts. Dealing with the bitterness and anger this engendered in me.

Failing at teaching a new class last spring, which ate up a lot of mental energy.

Struggling with the fundamental mission of my university at times, which I both benefit from and rail against. I invited some anti-mining activists to the university, which got me and some of my lovely colleagues in hot water and took a long time to sort out. I was afraid and angry about this, too.

Leaving a productive research group in order to salvage friendships and a good work environment.

Dealing with marauding hormones. Thank you, dear birth control pill, for coming back into my life.

Still addressing, after 9 years of marriage, stale and unhealthy communication patterns with E. I fear sometimes we will never get them figured out, but I know this is not true, and that we will push through, stay in it with each other, and come out the other side better.

Dealing with Nolie's rotten sleep issues (now mostly resolved, thank goodness).

E.'s misery at work.

Now that I have this all written out, I don't like the idea of saying 2011 wasn't a good year. In fact, it was. Even the sad or difficult times taught me a lot, and I'm a better person than I was a year ago, which is the best you can ask from a year, I think.

Again, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude for all of these blessings, and for all of you. Here's to a terrific 2012!

To Stay

2011-12-31T09:33:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this in a little nook of our house that I like to call the "cafe."

We moved the dining room table into the greater part of our great room and have this little seating area now that allows one to sit in the sun, or gaze up into Rupert's branches, or read, or do puzzles. It's quite lovely and peaceful.

Don't look out the window, though. There are 60-mile-an-hour winds right now and everything outside has been strewn about the yard. It sounds like our house is going to blow away any minute now.

I don't know why I'm writing about all this, except that I'm trying to figure out a way into what I really want to write about, which is mindfulness, being present. I want to point your attention to this post, which is lovely, and also to this post from Amy at Sweet Sweet Life, excerpted here and titled "stay," which I've read several times now and keep thinking about:

I'm realizing how very, very important it is...to stay. To stay with our loved ones, to stay in the scary or painful moment, to stay in the tired and boring and dirty bits of life. To not run, in one way or another, to a place where we can attempt to feel nothing. For one thing, obviously, these types of moments far outnumber the prototypically joyful, beautiful, neat moments by far. So if we were to run from them, we'd be running an awful lot of our lives. More importantly, I realized from all my reading that these are the moments when love and growth and real healing happen. If we're honest with ourselves when we're struggling, we can grow emotionally and spiritually as human beings, here to help one another.

Most of my problems in the past came from not wanting to stay. And I say this as a very unadventurous person: I almost never travel, have never left the states, have been married for 20 years with no plans to leave ever, I am and always have been a really good and present mom, I don't really enjoy new things and I will fight change with every bit of my being. But not staying doesn't have to be physical--it can be emotional, too. I can not stay by going shopping on the computer. I can not stay by pouring a glass of wine. I can not stay by holing myself up in my room with a really good book when my children or husband want to spend time with me. I can not stay by eating another brownie, or two or three. And I can not stay by going to bed at 8:00 in the evening and sleeping for 12 hours. (I'm not saying that any or all of these things are not fine now and again, but you know and I know when we're running away. We just do.)

Boredom, fear, pain, fatigue, anger and annoyance. All things we feel when we are with other people, a great deal of the time. Not just our families, but everyone, everywhere, all the time. At the post office, at the stoplight, at work and at home. So if this is the way it is, what can that tell us? Is life supposed to be annoying 95% of the time? Really? Is this it?

I don't think so. I think that these moments are teachers, and that we had better take good notes and learn the lesson. It's about us, not them, and staying present with these moments in a non-judgmental way is the only path out. When we are annoyed, we are upset because we aren't coming first for some reason. But who ever said we would, or even should? I don't remember getting that memo: "Dear Amy, you are the most important person in the world. You should be at the head of every line, have the least amount of trouble and pain, and never, ever have to suffer anyone you deem to be less savvy than you. Amen." Nope. I believe the wording was actually something along the lines of "Love one another and don't be mean and selfish." Or something.

But let's be honest: why else are we here? What else would be our purpose in life, really? We are placed, somehow, on this earth together. And it is only together that we will find a way out of the scary bits. We are meant to be here for each other, through words and actions. Not to run, but to be there, in the boring, messy moments. And to work through them, to help each other, and that helps us.

There were times in the car, and more than a few hours during our stay in San Diego, where I did not stay. Sometimes this was on purpose--I needed to take care of myself by checking out. But if I'm really honest, the truth is that I very frequently and mindlessly do not stay.

I'm misrepresenting our visit. Now that I've been out of the car for a few days (those last few hours coming into Colorado were murder) I can say that it was a really lovely visit. E.'s family is welcoming and loving; we had some beautiful moments around Christmas trees and on the beach and in Balboa Park; the kids did great on four 9-hour days in the car.

But I did have a meltdown the first full day we were there, which necessitated me needing to leave my father-in-law's house for an angry and fearful walk, and a tearful emergency call to one of my best friends. I won't get her words right, but she basically helped me to see that I have trouble being still--trouble staying--because there are some things I haven't wanted to deal with. I've been running away so long and so persistently that my staying skills are quite poor at the moment. My ability to "be" is fine when everything is quiet and I'm by myself; I'm not so good when there are things I need to deal with, or people to interact with when those interactions might be difficult, scary, or boring. I haven't been able to see this because I work a lot and rationalize the heck out of a lot of my choices.

I don't have any of this all figured out, but I can say that something in my consciousness is shifting. They are just little micro-changes, but I'm practicing talking to E. when I'm bothered instead of avoiding or hiding in sarcasm. We may need more than this; we'll have to see. My interactions with the kids are different. I'm meditating, sometimes several times a day, and working to both physically and mentally stay. This all seems cliche. And also it helps.

I don't know how to finish this post. I'm grateful to have had this time off and away from work to see things more clearly. I feel vulnerable to getting sucked back in once work begins again. The winds howl all around sometimes and I struggle to stay still, and to stay.

Speaking of Gratitude

2011-12-20T09:38:00.000-08:00

We're taking down all of our Christmas decorations, which is always a weird feeling when Christmas hasn't quite arrived yet, but I prefer this weird feeling to the feeling of getting home after Christmas and feeling like, ugh, have to deal with all this stuff. So we do it before we leave.

Like most crafty bloggers, we had a gratitude tree again this year, though instead of making a tree or posting one on the wall, we just used Rupert, the two-story ficus who is rooted in our foundation and grows up through the middle of the house. I wrapped him in, what's it called, organza? And then the girls wrote their gratitude cards a day or two before Thanksgiving and we pinned them to Rupert.

Here is a run-down of Addie's cards:

I'm thankful for earth and sun
I'm grateful for skiing
I'm thankful for books and art
I'm grateful for my freinds
I'm thankful for my pets
I'm thankful for art, music, and P.E.
I'm thankful for learning
I'm grateful for my family
I'm thankful for holidays!
I'm thankful for Blue
I'm thankful for fun!
I'm thankful for Ms. George
I'm thankful for my grandparents
I'm thankful for my sister
I'm grateful for food and water

And Nolie's:

My dog
Love
Peace Love and Musick
Helth
My school
lerning
cards
My Family
I Heart Ranbows
Sister
Abbie Mommy and Dabby
Mrs. Tubbs
Foob
Myself
My cat
when happy
jen and eric
Erth
You

I love these lists. I love my girls. I'm grateful for their gratitude!

a few soul things

2011-12-19T20:47:00.000-08:00

I'm choosing to shut the semester down, even though things remain undone and there are projects to which I have committed that I am unprepared to finish. Instead of stressing and scurrying, I'll aim for quiet for the next few weeks, and time with my girls, and time to figure out why I've been feeling grumpy, angry, and/or blah the last month.

Just deciding to take this time, I already feel lighter. That's a sign that I'm moving in the right direction. There lies some peace, which has been frustratingly elusive lately.

My friend N. lent me Elizabeth Lesser's book Broken Open. I started it a few weeks ago then didn't pick it up again because I wasn't in a position to listen to what it had to say. But it's calling to me, so I opened it back up and had to share this with you:

When you tire of your own constriction and you open, come what may, to the flow of life, you and your soul become one, and you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Yet so often we resist the pull of the river. We tune out the call of the soul. Perhaps we fear what the soul would have to say about choices we have made, habits we have formed, and decisions we are avoiding. Perhaps if we quieted down and asked the soul for direction, we would be moved to make a big change. Maybe that wild river of energy, with its longing for joy and freedom, would capsize our more prudent plans, our ambitions, our very survival. Why should we trust something as indeterminate as a soul? And so we shut down. I have shut down to my soul enough times to know what it feels like when the river is dammed. I know the feeling of deadness; I know how the river diverts itself and breaks through in other ways--as a desire to blame, as an emotion of anger, as physical illness, as restlessness, or weariness, or self-destruction. The soul always speaks, and sometimes it speaks the loudest when we block its flow, when we live only half of a life, when we stay on the surface.

If we don't listen to the voice of the soul, it sings a stranger tune. If we don't go looking for what lies beneath the surface of our lives, the soul comes looking for us.

My soul has come looking for me, apparently, so as we make the long drive to San Diego in the next few days, and as I have time to sit, unplugged, and chill with people we love, I'll do some listening, too, and see what undamming might happen.

In the meanwhile, please do yourself a favor and go watch the movie Life in a Day. It's streaming on Netflix, if you have access there, or you might check YouTube here. It's so great, and talk about the soul speaking. I'm so grateful for beautiful things like this.

Also, I'm so grateful for you. You know that, right? I'm grateful you're here, and for all the blessings and gatherings and togetherness that lie behind my amazing community of friends and loved ones. Thanks for visiting me here now and then.

More on Balance

2011-12-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

You know that question, "How do you do it?" It's intended as a compliment, right? And also has a bit of judgment in it (I haven't seen the movie yet, but there are plenty of judgments in the trailers alone)? I just finished Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers (thanks to S. for lending that to me for an entire year, which is how much time it took me to finish that slim little book). And now I think the answer to that is, "With luck and a shitload of help." In other words, I worked hard and tried some things and failed a lot, but also I "do it" because I was born at a particular time in a particular location and into a particular social class and ethnicity. Apparently Idaho, circa 1975, was a fortunate time and place to be born.

I don't mean that facetiously. I would just have to make sense of what I mean, and I'm not able to do that yet because I haven't had a cup of coffee yet. I gave up coffee. Until about 10am.

I think I've tried to say something like this a few times, about how the notion of "balance" for working mothers (and maybe for everyone) is a culturally-constructed mirage. But here's Martha Beck on it, writing in her funny and eloquent way (and with inappropriate cocaine jokes, which make me feel better about my own inappropriateness. And skip down to the bottom for another useful article if you don't want to read this one):

Here is typical scenario from when my children were younger: It’s five o’clock in the morning. I’ve been awake for about 23 hours, having struggled vainly to fit in writing between yesterday’s tasks: getting the car fixed, taking the dog to the vet, answering email, grocery shopping, driving my kids to music lessons, seeing clients, picking up deli sandwiches for dinner, and cuddling one of my children through some of the horrors of growing up. I finally sat down at my computer around midnight—and looked up just now to see the sun rising.

Since I’m up, I decide to set a historic precedent by preparing breakfast. All goes well as I awaken my children and head to the kitchen, at which point I remember how much I hate to cook. I even hate to toast. The kids arrive, yawning, and ask what I’m planning to serve them. I think for a minute, then say, “We have Oreos.”

My children roll their eyes.

“We have cocaine,” I venture. I’m pretty sure they know this is a joke. I’ve never seen cocaine, much less tried it—although frankly it’s beginning to sound like a good idea. Isn’t that how Sigmund Freud got so much done?

Understand three things: (1) I don’t have a job. I am a writer, which means I procrastinate and get away with it; (2) my children are not young. They walk, talk, bathe, diagnose their own viruses; and (3) I’m kind of supposed to be an expert at combining career and family. I conducted years of sociological research on the topic, wrote several big fat books about it. Plus, I’m a life coach. You’d think I could live a balanced life as a 21st century American woman.

Ha. In fact, having done all that research, I can tell you with absolute assurance that it is impossible for women to achieve the kind of balance recommended by many well-meaning self-help counselors. I didn’t say such balance is difficult to attain. I didn’t say it’s rare. It’s impossible. Our culture’s definition of what women should be is fundamentally, irreconcilably unbalanced. That’s the bad news. The good news is that the very imbalance of our culture is forcing women to find equilibrium in an entirely new way.

Henry David Thoreau’s classic book Walden recounts two years the author spent living in solitary harmony with the wilderness. The book’s premise is that all humans could live simply and naturally, as Thoreau did. As a teenager, I loved Walden. Years later, as an exhausted working mother, I learned something Thoreau failed to mention in his journal: The entire time he was roughing it, his mother and sisters helped care for his needs, hauling in food and hauling out laundry. The reason Thoreau didn’t write about this is that he took it for granted. Like most thinker’s of his generation, he saw “women’s work” as a product of natural female instinct: Birds fly south for the winter, and women show up to wash men’s underwear. Okay, so I’m a little bitter—but only because this attitude pervaded American culture well into my own lifetime.

Early American feminists fought for the right to participate in the workforce by assuring everyone that it was easy to do women’s work—perhaps with one’s toes, while simultaneously performing jobs traditionally reserved for men. I once believed this, and I have the colorful medical history to prove it. Women of my generation thought we could have everything; experience taught us we could have everything but sleep (one sociologist who studied an early cohort of working mothers wrote, “These women talked about sleep the way a starving person talks about food”). Bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan while never letting hubby forget he’s a man turned out to be a logistical challenge to rival the moon landing, but without support from Houston.

Three Ways to Lose Your Balance

I spent the last decade of the 20th century interviewing American women and found that no matter how they sought balance, virtually none of them attained it in their culturally prescribed role. Some of these women were like Meg, a stay-at-home mother who sacrificed her career to care for her children, only to feel devalued by a society that equates professional achievement with fundamental worth. Others resembled Laura, a 43-year-old lawyer who never got the marriage or children she’d always expected. Laura’s heart ached every time she attended yet another baby shower. At work, married people dumped extra work on her, figuring she had no life. But most of the women I spoke to were like Stephanie, who had a good job, two children, and chronic fatigue. For years Stephanie’s boss complained that her work was inadequate because of the time she devoted to her family, while Stephanie (and her relatives) worried that her children were suffering because of the energy required by her work.

Many of these women were haunted by the fear that others were judging them negatively. They were right. Our culture does belittle women who cannot be both professional high-achievers and traditional moms. It questions the devotion of women who attempt to combine the two roles. My conclusion? Balance, schmalance. Trying to establish a harmonious equilibrium between our society’s definition of What a Woman Should Be is like trying to resolve the tension between two hostile enemies by locking them in a room together. But there is hope.

The Joy of Being Unbalanced

If someone condemned you because, say, you failed to prevent Hurricane Katrina, you wouldn’t dissolve in shame or work to overcome your inadequacy. You’d probably conclude that your critic was nuts, then simply dismiss the whole issue. That’s the wonderful thing about seeing that our society makes impossible demands on all women. You free yourself to ignore social pressures and begin creating a life that comes from your own deepest desires, hopes, and dreams. You’ll stop living life from the outside in and begin living it from the inside out.

That’s what happened to Meg, Laura, and Stephanie when each lost her balance in a dramatic way. Meg, the stay-at-home mom, hit the end of her rope when her husband left her for a “more accomplished” coworker. Laura’s turning point was an emergency hysterectomy that meant she would never have the baby shower of her dreams. Stephanie finally realized she was trying to do the impossible the day her mother-in-law scolded her for working too much and she was fired for being too concerned with her personal life.

There will moments when you really “get” that the expectations you’ve been trying to fulfill are unfulfillable. This epiphany was terrible, because it meant relinquishing the goal of total social acceptance. But it was also the beginning of freedom, of learning to seek guidance by turning inward to the heart, rather than outward to social prescriptions. After her crisis, Laura discovered a passion for gardening that led her to quit her corporate job and start a floral nursery business. Meg spends her time contributing to the local schools and developing relationships that help her see her own value. Stephanie got a new job by developing a proposal that showed how she could add value to a company while working from home.

On the surface, these aren’t revolutionary acts. But they filled each woman’s life with authenticity and satisfaction. If you feel trapped by contradictory demands, you may want to join this gentle rebellion. You can help create a new cultural paradigm, one that replaces conformity with honesty, convention with creativity, and judgment with kindness. That, in the end, is the gift of the disequilibrium that society has bequeathed to all of us. Being forced to seek balance within ourselves, we can make our unsteady, stumbling days feel less and less like disaster and more and more like a joyful dance—the dance of a wildly, wonderfully, perfectly unbalanced life.

And also here is the editor's introduction to last month's issue of More Magazine, which says something similar. The stories reminded me a lot of my own, especially when the girls were younger:

The other day I had lunch with an old friend who could be the poster child for the overstretched, do-it-all female. Not only is she the editor of a successful magazine but she is also its publisher. So she does two full-time jobs: creating great content for her readers and then, in her spare time, performing the equally challenging high-wire act of courting the advertisers. Oh, and she lives on the Pacific Rim, has to do business in New York and Europe several times a year and reports to a boss in Milan—she flies there regularly to meet with him. Still not seeing any problem? Well, let me add the last salient fact: She's also the mother of two kids. So it shouldn't have surprised me that when I mentioned that both my kids were now out of the house, away at school, she looked at me like a marathon dieter who'd just seen a three-layer chocolate cake: “That means you can devote all your time to work!” she said with a wistful sigh, laced with heavy doses of jet lag. “Oh, I can't even imagine!”

Only two years ago, I couldn't have imagined it either. With my kids then still at home, I too was run ragged by attempting to do it all. Take the time, for instance, when we had just moved from the city to the suburbs. Our son, JJ, had entered the local kindergarten, and somehow our name had not made it onto that small-town bible: the official school calling list. My husband had already cleared out for the 5:30 am train to his job in the city while I got JJ ready for school and our newborn daughter, Lake, out of her crib, dressed and fed. I was in full supermom mode—slipping into my best work clothes and blow-drying my hair while simultaneously microwaving JJ's bowl of instant oatmeal (jail me for high crimes against nutrition; the kid wouldn't eat anything else!) and coaxing the baby to take her bottle. Somewhere in the background I'm sure the TV was blaring the news of an impending snowstorm, but I was in move-forward mode. It could even have been one of those days when I'd gotten up at 5 am to make cookies for a school bake sale—you know, the kind you find out about from a flyer you pull out of the kid's backpack the night before. Those notes from school were always very clear: Everyone needs to participate, and they need to start from scratch … The flyers would actually specify “No Entenmann's!” (Yes, I could have disobeyed, but goody-goody moms like me never do.)

Our full-time babysitter arrived; I kissed Lake good-bye and bundled JJ into his puffer jacket. Driving him the half mile to school was one of those small maternal pleasures I refused to delegate. I pulled up to the curb and watched JJ tumble out, lean all his weight into the heavy school door and disappear inside. I grabbed the train. Ten minutes into the trip, my cell phone rang. “Is this Mrs. Seymour?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

“Yes?!”

“This is the assistant principal from Murray Avenue School,” the voice said as panic rose in my chest: Something had happened to JJ! He was kidnapped walking down the hall! He was crushed in the stampede for the classroom after the bell …

Uh. No.

“I found him wandering around the school, which is closed for a snow day. Didn't you get the call?”

“What call? We're new in town,” I said as my subconscious released little balloons of guilty recognition into my consciousness. I was sort of surprised at how easy drop-off had been—no waiting in line with 20 chuffing cars, no PTA moms hauling kindergartners out of the backseats. Pop. Pop. Pop.

“The class mother is supposed to have called you. But don't worry, I can wait here with JJ till you get him.”

Well, umm … Given the busy workday that lay ahead, I called my sitter and asked her to go, which made me feel even more like a candidate for Uber-Bad Mom. And my list of failures to balance work and parenthood goes on from there. Which is why I always squirm when I meet women who ask, “So how did you do it all?”

The answer, of course, is that I didn't. And the reality is that balance only happens over a lifetime—there will be years when you must choose family over work and years when you must do the opposite. And some, frankly, when you will run around with your hair on fire until you figure out what works for you. So it was actually comforting when I recently had dinner with a group of late-bloomer moms who reject the idea of doing it all as “unrealistic” and “self-defeating.” These women accept the necessity of making choices. One terrifically successful pediatric dentist works only three days a week and spends the rest of her time with her kids. Some of the women are staying home full time, at least for now, while others are working full time and more. I was impressed: We have come a long way. Somehow, however, I forgot to mention to them that when I was editing Redbook, I was the genius who came up with the tagline “Balancing family, work, love, time for you.” But hey, it was the ’90s!

Mistakes with Money Were Made

2011-12-09T10:25:00.000-08:00

I don't write much about the nitty-gritty of our finances here. There's all the status and shame wrapped up in it, and not wanting to burden you too much with details, and needing to respect our privacy. But E. and I are going through some interesting financial transitions, and it's on my mind, so I'm writing about them here.

Our history, in brief:

I grew up without much money, and with a personality predisposed toward the material (nurture+nature on that one). Then we inherited money when I was a teenager. Not a ton, but enough so that things got easier and my level of material access increased quite a bit.

I have always worked hard. I have made good career choices, have frequently been privileged or lucky, and have consistently moved up the salary ladder. At the same time, I have made really bad spending choices. I am a spender. I like to have clothes and little treats and eating out and all that. I'm not good at telling myself no. I have been in debt, different kinds of debt, for a long time.

E. grew up without a ton of money either (I think--his history is always hazy). He also worked really hard, but didn't always make awesome career choices. It took him a while to get through college. He has not been disposed toward the material, except in the form of large expenditures. He's willing to pay money to buy exactly what he wants, but is able to save for it, and doesn't spend money on lots of little things like I do. He has always earned more than I have, until this year (by choice, for him) and is willing to argue hard for what he is worth to employers.

E. is a saver. He is not haunted by the material in the way I am. Before meeting me, he had more than enough money and rarely needed to check his bank balance. I, on the other hand, would spend my checking account down to the last penny.

Then we got married. We were in a lot of debt because E. was out of work for a while, I didn't make much money, and I spent too much. Then I took over the finances, created spreadsheets and a debt payment plan, we started making more money at work, we made some more money on a real estate transaction, and we made the decision to get out of debt. Or, I should say, credit card debt. We still owe quite a lot on my student loans and we have a mortgage. But we've been out of credit card debt for a long time now, and plan to stay that way.

A few years ago, E. took over the finances. We have been fighting and fighting about them because we just fundamentally do things differently and see spending differently. Like I said, I'm a spender, but he's also had unrealistic assumptions about how much it takes to keep a vibrant family of four going. Clashes ensued. I relinquished control and waited to be told what to do.

More clashes ensued, but we soldiered on. Life was good. We make good money, and I often make extra money at work that back-filled any gaps that arose now and then.

Around that same time, we decided to put all of our monthly expenses--utilities, cable, groceries, gas, etc.--on two credit cards, one from Frontier and one from Southwest. The idea was that we would pay these cards off every month and earn frequent flyer miles, which would help defray the insane travel costs of visiting our families a couple of times of year by air. Four tickets would easily run us $1200, so it seemed like a good idea.

We've stuck to it. We've always paid those bills every month.

But then we noticed something, and fought for a long time about fixing it. The thing we noticed was that we somehow weren't saving any money (other than what automatically went into our 401ks). Even worse, we were sometimes spending more than we earned and the savings accounts we had been so proud of were getting depleted.

This didn't make sense. We're earning more money now than ever, and our substantial childcare costs have decreased significantly. Certainly there was some lifestyle inflation in there (thank you, new bathrooms; thank you ski tickets; thank you my Boden addiction), and E. started taking one day off a week, but on paper we still should have been okay. Things just never added up in reality.

Well, the problem turns out to be those credit cards. See, when you put all of your expenses on the credit card, it gets really hard to track how much money you actually have, because the statements for the cards are timed differently from your bank statements. Plus, both of us were spending on two different accounts, and had no idea what the other had spent. E. would reconcile at the end of every month, but we still didn't have a good sense of the big picture as to where the money was going, or how much we had left in the bank at any given time.

All this leading to years of not saving as much as we should have and spending more than we should have.

It's all going to be fine. We're not in any real trouble. A couple of months of belt-tightening and I think we'll be in excellent shape. E.'s going to have to work Mondays again for a bit, and is considering taking a promotion at work. We're both committed to scaling back the lifestyle inflation, getting back to basics, and beefing up the savings.

But now we're in this transition phase of having to get off the cards and go back to spending directly from our joint account for tracking purposes. There is a time lag, so we essentially have thousands extra to pay off of the cards to get them down to zero while we transition to spending from that joint account (this doesn't sound right, but it's just because our credit card payment date happens late in the month, and meanwhile we will have been spending on the joint. It just puts the squeeze on for a few months while we make up the lag).

So, Merry Christmas to us.

I'm really glad we're doing this, though. I prefer simple, transparent systems where we can see how much we have, and when the amount we've allotted for certain things is gone, it's gone. Then you get frugal and creative, and I really like that. I like that challenge and enjoy it. I'm also overwhelmed with how rich our lives are, and how lucky we are to get to choose this particular transition rather than have it forced on us. I'm grateful to all the family members who agreed to opt out of giftmas this year. I'm also excited to begin saving so that we can build our savings accounts back up and maybe also start to save for vacations or other treats. I think this will be good for us.

Long story short: we broke that first rule of personal finance--track what you spend--and now we're paying for it. No amount of frequent flyer miles is worth that (what were we thinking?). And if I spend time with you personally, you might see some shifts in the kinds of choices I make for a while till we get things figured out. But I think E. and I both are ready to try to fix things, and feel optimistic about where we're headed now.

Over the Threshold

2011-12-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

Oh, God, I hesitate to say it, because who knows what pox will befall my house as a result (I'm so superstitious now), but I think we might have finally gotten Nolie well. She's pretty much been sick since Halloween: the impetigo, the cold, the never-ending stomach flu. She finally went back to school today. And not a day too soon: she was working in her workbook last night and couldn't remember her letters and numbers. She could tell you about every episode of Johnny Test ever made, though, I guarantee it. We have watched a lot of t.v. these last few weeks.

Anyway, maybe dealing with 30 days of five-year-old whininess and sleeplessness was getting the best of me. Or maybe it was the relentlessness of this semester, which seems to have gone on about two weeks too long. Maybe it's some mid-thirties blah thing, where everything has sort of fallen into place around you, and you blink and look up, and wonder what now. There's also the hormones, this going back on the pill thing, which has mostly been really great (skin and weight problems beginning to resolve themselves; sleeping better; have more energy; not spending half my life in pms- or period-land) but has also involved some hormone-induced blue periods. I think I can tell when I'm in a biological stupor vs. one incurred by external circumstances at this point, but that's probably a weird or artificial distinction to make, I don't know.

So I was just feeling a little blah, maybe, like in the routine of things and realizing that you've sort of set a track for yourself by this age, and you're in it, and there's a lot of inertia built in, so change is possible but less likely, and jeez maybe even you're a little bit trapped, or at least bored.

Maybe things weren't even as existential as all that. Perhaps I had just been shut up in the house with my cranky kindergartner for too long, or maybe the trees lost all their leaves but the snow hadn't begun to fall yet and it was just that in-between time where nothing appears to be moving.

Then yesterday I had this crazy, obvious epiphany as I was walking in the house with Nolie, who tried to go to school but just wasn't quite well enough yet, and I normally would be a little peeved because I really wanted the day to sit home and drink tea and coffee in the quiet and work on a paper that is due very soon and now it would be checking email at best while the Johnny Test marathon and whinefest happened all around me. I realized that I was setting myself up for another day of being annoyed, and that I didn't want to be annoyed.

In my head I had a quick string of thoughts about how I must change my thinking on all this because, frankly, it was getting old, feeling grumpy and stuck, and I had a vague sense of myself as not being very fun to be around and also feeling bored with my own blase-ness. There was the whole who do you think you are strain of thinking and what is your problem and get over it.

And, in a flash, here is the thought that came into my head: "You are so blessed. You have everything you need."

No, still not right. Boring. Obvious. Self-help treacle.

Then, this: "You are so blessed. You have everything you want."

Holy cow. That's a big deal. I mean, yes, having everything you need is a blessing. Don't think I don't know that. Don't think I don't see how much people are struggling here and around the world just to meet needs. Don't think I don't know that I'm quite spoiled and selfish and materialistic most of the time.

It's just that there's really something to put it together that not only are my needs being met, but I am living exactly the life I have always wanted, and yet am choosing to look at the little things that fall out of place rather than the tremendous big picture that is always holding together. What an odd way of living life! What a waste!

I mean, how much time to I spend feeling anxious about papers needing to be graded or articles that are due or staying in touch with friends and family? About the dirt on the floor? About my muffin top, missing a meeting, needing a haircut, getting tenure? About sixteen-hundred times more time than I spend thinking about what a sweet life this is, that's how much.

What a dumb-ass.

I dropped my bags right there in the hallway and laughed. Then, weirdly enough, this weight that I didn't even know was around my shoulders also lifted. Nothing else about the day outwardly changed: I had exactly the day I pretty much expected in my grumbling imagination. Except that it felt great. I had this total awareness that all of the choices I had made in my life up until now, all of the thoughts and dreams and imagining I have had, have led me to exactly this moment. Instead of feeling trapped, I felt good.

I think it's this: the unnamed need to look for what is next or what is missing vanished.

Maybe that chafes. Maybe we're not supposed to stop looking, yearning, longing, visualizing, visioning. And I'm sure there will be times in the future when I'll do those things and will need to do them.

But realizing that I don't have to look anymore because I have everything I want right now takes away so much anxiety for me. It means I don't have to shop. I don't have to feel anxious when we run low on food. I don't have to look at ads for jobs. I don't have to be making anything. I'm not missing anything. I can do more of what I want and feel good about it, and what I want becomes much clearer. All those millions of choices, some dumb and some not, they just led me to this moment of reality, and that reality is perfect.

Forgive my totally obvious ramblings. It's so simple you must wonder if I am ever going to get it. And no doubt this is a lesson I'll have to keep learning. I'll forget again. But this was my earth-shattering realization from yesterday, accomplished while walking in the door.

First Commission

2011-11-28T07:54:00.000-08:00

I've never had someone pay me to make a gift for someone else before, so it was pretty exciting when my friend C. commissioned a cowl-neck scarf and fingerless gloves for her sister-in-law for Christmas. Here's how they turned out:

As usual, my photog skills leave something to be desired. And, truth be told, I might not have gone for such vivid colors myself. But that was the order, and I love this yarn and how the texture turned out (I prefer the chunky, purled side out). It kind of ended up Missoni-esque, I think.

Here's the matching fingerless:

Hairy arms not included.

I hope she likes 'em.

Ransom-Treaty-Forgiveness Note

2011-11-26T09:12:00.000-08:00

The sleeping bag plan is working like a freaking charm, thank God, but Nolie's streak of death-defying tantrums continues. She is always very contrite afterwards. I found this on my desk yesterday:

I am sorry mom i hope we can work it out!

And then we had a big impromptu party the night after Thanksgiving and someone gave a child a camera.

2011-11-26T08:41:00.000-08:00

Man, I love our neighborhood.

Thanksgobbling, Thanksgiving, Thanksgoodtimes

2011-11-26T08:25:00.000-08:00

I'm pretty sure I still owe you a Halloween post. Those pictures are on E's camera. That's the hold up. It's all his fault for owning a camera and hoarding the pictures. Harumph.

But on to Thanksgiving, which long-time readers will know is my VERY favorite holiday because it involves puttering around the house all day, sipping cocktails and eating olives and pickles while E. conjures an insane feast, whether for 20 friends we are lucky enough to host or for just us four. This time we had our dear friends M. and S. (back from the brink of disaster with a really, really broken arm, but here and smiling, always) and our new friend W. We were too busy pigging out to take many pictures, but rest assured it was a delightful, peaceful time together.

Rather than create a gratitude tree this year, we decided to just use Rupert, because we are glad to have a tree growing in our house. The girls did all their own cards, which mostly centered around family, friends, school and teachers. Here are some others:

Peace, Love, and Music

I'm grateful for skiing

Jen and Eric

I'm thankful for my sister

Food

Love

I'm grateful for all of you. Happy Thanksgiving.

Grace Again

2011-11-19T09:05:00.000-08:00

Ooh, I sounded pretty bad yesterday, huh? I was in a rough spot. Tired out. Also, forgot to take the pill first thing in the morning (yes, I'm back on, didn't like being thrust into peri-menopause at 36, no thank you) and boy did that make me weepy. Glad I didn't have to teach or I might have cried in class or something. I almost lost it at a talk on fracking, I just felt so despairing that scientists would ever really talk with the public in a respectful way, they would always just condescend and ignore and so why they hell am I even trying? Also I just felt profoundly lost about what to do and how to help my kid and was having trouble accessing any good love for her. How terrible. So everything got all wound up with everything else and things seemed dark.

I had a date with my friend N. to hear James Van Praagh at unchurch and even though I was worn out I knew I needed to go. Yes, he's a medium. Yes, he looks something like a gay Magnum P.I. (he is gay, and an amazing performer, and a shining soul).

He was funny as hell, and humble. Direct but kind. That said, I've never been to a medium and was really skeptical and, of course, tired, and not expecting much other than to be entertained.

But then watching him turned everything inside out and I had a memory of choosing not to be quite so busy. I had a memory of my child laying on top of me, peaceful and quiet. I had a memory of my grandparents and their love for me--inexplicable given how many grandchildren there are and how could I be beloved? But still, there it was--and next thing I knew, that little leprechaun of a psychic had put me right back in myself, all just by talking to some other people's dead folks right in front of me. I don't know what it was, but I sure felt like I had received some grace afterwards, and I can breathe this morning.

And then there's N., whose a former nurse and mother of three (now grown) and just a total light in my life. She listened to me prattle on about these struggles with Nolie and told me, in her unassuming and lovely way, about how when her youngest was four, he couldn't sleep in his room at night either. So they just put a sleeping bag at the base of their bed. The deal was, he had to go to sleep on his own in his own bed, and the ideal would be for him to stay there. But if he absolutely couldn't hack it in the middle of the night because he was afraid, he could very quietly come into their room and crawl in that sleeping bag and be in there with them. But he couldn't make a peep, and couldn't wake anyone up.

I got home at 11 with that wild-eyed feeling you get when you're exhausted, and my head was totally spinning from the realization of, the proof I had witnessed of, life beyond this particular consciousness (and please don't send me any critiques of mediumship right now, because if this is a myth or a trick, it's a lovely one, and I'd like to hold on to it for a bit). So I wasn't able to sleep very well right away, but then did fall asleep until 1am, our usual time for Nolie to wake, and she did.

I said to hell with it, and broke my rule that you never try something new in the middle of the night, and I explained the sleeping bag deal to her, and the relief that ran through her little body was just totally palpable, and I felt incredibly relieved, too, and she slept in her sleeping bag beside our bed all night, quiet as a mouse. E. woke up rested and so did Nolie. I didn't sleep that great because I was just too wound up, and sensitive to her being there and worried it wouldn't work. But everyone had a smile on their faces this morning anyway, and I cuddled her and loved on her and we chatted for a while before cartoon time, and we're going to give it a try, our new Right To Sleep Without A Peep plan. Just because it worked last night doesn't mean it will always work but I feel hopeful which is a step up from yesterday.

Today I mostly feel grateful. I was going to try to get some work done. I was going to catch up on chores and tasks. But all that's out the window now, and instead we'll just go with whatever the day brings.

Croup...There It Is.

2011-11-18T13:16:00.000-08:00

Addie's been pretty darn healthy the last two years, so maybe you won't blame me too much when I was totally surprised at her wicked bout with croup on Wednesday night. It was one in the morning, and she came stumbling into our room gasping for air. E. got her first, then I realized what was happening and got up too. She was understandably panicked at not being able to breathe, so while he got the nebulizer set up, I held her face in my hands and tried to calmly explain what was happening to her, and how crying only made it worse. It took a few minutes, but she finally got calmed down, but didn't fall asleep for a few hours. She doesn't have any infections to go along with the croup--at least, she didn't when we were at the doctor's yesterday--so that's a good thing. It appears to just have been triggered by the cold that Nolie was nursing for a few weeks. But she does feel pretty puny and sounds like an old-man smoker, and had to stay home from school yesterday.

That makes five days of missed work for me in the last two weeks.

Also, E. has developed a wicked snoring habit.

Also, and this is the worst thing of all, Nolie is staging another sleep-strike. A maddening, horrible, exhausting sleep-strike. She is throwing a tantrum that lasts pretty much all night long. We can get her to sleep fine, and she'll sleep for a few hours, and then she gets out of her bed every five minutes after, screaming and yelling about nightmares and growing pains and us being the woost pawents evah (still with that one). She will not listen to us and is ferociously stubborn and there's nothing we can do. She really wants us to let her sleep in our bed, but I just won't do it. I won't go back to that. So we fight all night long about her staying in her room and consequences and respectfulness and responsibility.

By 5 am this morning, I just hid under the blankets and willed myself back to sleep.

I've been weepy and shaky all day. I'm short-tempered. I'm mad.

I don't know what to do to help her at this point. If I had any ideas, my brain is too tired to process them. I'm returning to the age-level of a five-year-old myself at this point. I want to say that it's not fair. I want everyone to leave me alone. I want to abandon them all and go stay at a hotel. I feel chubby and low-energy and unproductive.

I hope things turn around as we head into this holiday week.

Darkness Descends

2011-11-15T17:25:00.000-08:00

Spooky title, eh? But it's just referring to the fact that it is somehow, inexplicably, unexplainably winter all of a sudden. And I'm so glad! I love early winter nesting. I rearranged things in the house again to make for some cozy nooks and open work spaces now that we're all indoors a lot more. And the ladies around here have been wanting to do some crafting!

And yes, every time I use the word "crafting," I think of this hilarious Amy Sedaris book, which M&S bought me for my last birthday. It is a good time.

We have a pretty nice collection of workbooks and other things to give us ideas. Tonight, we worked from Fairy Things to Make and Do.

It is also a good time. Especially if you are five or seven. When we first bought it a few years ago, though, we just ripped all the stickers out of it, stuck them all over our bodies, and ran around naked. Then we never did anything with the book again, until tonight.

There is that terrible time between when we've finished dinner and when E. gets home and finishes his dinner. It can become the tantrum hour if you let it. The girls are prone to whininess and neediness in that half hour to hour, I'm antsy and distracted, and I don't want them to watch tv, it's too dark to play outside, and they're too grumpy to play nicely together.

So I typically try to make this weird hour "Family ________ Time." The blank gets filled in with lots of things: reading, knitting, art, writing, crafts. Last week when I was trying to finish those damned Twilight books there were a couple of Family Reading Times. It still amazes me that we can do this now that Nolie is reading chapter books. Then there was Family Art Time, where I brought down the pastels Grambie gifted them a while back, the "special" markers (i.e., the ones that I don't want lost or chewed up), sequins, and glue. And we went for it. But other nights it's just white paper and markers, and that's fine, too. And we're all knitting now, so that also works.

The key is to keep it short, maybe play some nice music in the background, have good, clear workspaces and defined boundaries, and offer lots of encouragement. Oh, and be ready to ditch if people aren't into it. Sometimes one feels like knitting and then one starts knitting and realizes one would rather be dancing instead. In which case "Family Dance Party Time" should ensue.

Anyway, tonight's masterpieces were fairy castles. Here's Addie's:

And Nolie's:

Things Seem Like It, Then They Aren't

2011-11-14T16:44:00.000-08:00

It turns out Nolie wasn't just sad, but sick. She had 10 days of antibiotics for that impetigo, and then a gnarly virus came and took her down, too. As always, it's hard to tell when she's sick because it just seems like she's getting grumpier and grumpier and then finally her head spins around and she spits blood at you and you figure out, "Oh! She's not just being cranky! She's sick!" In this case, she was just exhausted and had no appetite and she kept moaning around the house that we were the "woost pawents evah" because we wouldn't let her jump off the tree, or eat flames, or whatever ridiculous thing she was requesting at the moment in her delirium. So it was a virus that turned our normally sweet, loving five-year-old into a shrieking, hateful Maury Povitch guest. This made it a little hard to access my empathic response.

Then, Friday night, she pretty much refused to go to bed altogether, even though she was burning up (despite the fact that I couldn't get the thermometer to catch a fever) and clearly dead-tired and completely wench-like. By 3am neither E. nor myself were exactly our best selves, and some yelling may have happened. Some unhappy memories were formed, primarily for me and E., since Nolie seems to have mostly forgotten the whole thing. I am still tired from the whole ordeal and wondering who absconded with my sweet baby child. I am also a little afraid of her. She is incredibly strong and stubborn. I'm grateful she's not sick very often. I'm also grateful she's not my size because she could whip my ass, no question. I'm especially grateful that she started to get better today, because otherwise I was going to send her back to Russia.

We stupidly thought on Sunday afternoon that it would be fun to get out of the house and make our virgin pilgrimage to Denver's newish Ikea. This was E's idea, actually. Which I'm still scratching my head over, because if there is one thing that man hates, it is shopping. If there is one thing I hate, it is shopping with him. Throw in the kids, one of who is grumpy-ass sick, and it's my least favorite way to spend any time, ever. I have largely kicked my shopping addiction, but I still view it as enjoyable me-time when I do it, and these people do nothing but defile the practice.

I won't bore you with the details, but let's just say that by the time we got back I was in a deep funk, dissatisfied with my life and my husband and my children, and pissed that we had to leave the store in such a huff that I couldn't buy three of these:

The ones I wanted were white with gold light and on stands and would have looked lovely in my house for Christmas. I'd show you a picture of the ones I actually wanted except I don't have them because of the awful people I live with.

It's best, after all, that we didn't bring more crap in the house. I realize that now. But at the time, I was pissed. Also, I was pissed about being in the car with E., which is where he does his quiet-time thinking/brooding, and I sit there bored out of my wits looking out the window. It was a long drive to that Ikea, and even longer home. So enjoyable.

All in all, I'd say the trip to Ikea was not that fun.

But I'll be going back by myself one of these days, friends, so you'll all be getting Ikea-themed Christmas gifts this year. And you better freaking appreciate them.

Nolie, Sad

2011-11-10T09:35:00.000-08:00

Nolie had a bad day yesterday. Or a bad afternoon, at least. My guess is that school went okay--after lots of probing, I couldn't get her to identify anything bad that happened in class. But after school, I think her blood sugar probably took a dump (thank you, stupid daylight savings time) and then she went to dance class, and because she missed the last two weeks (thank you snowstorm, thank you impetigo), she didn't know the moves. She heard someone laugh at her messing something up, and it set her off. She wouldn't talk on the way home. She grunted and fussed. She wouldn't eat dinner. And the bad mood lasted until bedtime, when I crawled into bed with her to rub her back and tummy while she listened to music. "The sadness won't last," I whispered to her. "You'll feel better tomorrow." She just rolled over and said, "I'd like to go to sleep now."

She's growing so fast. Her face is getting longer, thinner. I can feel her collarbones protrude now. She's so much more independent.

Nolie's got big emotions, and lucky for us, they are usually happy ones. She is incredibly expressive. She laughs loud, rolling laughs. She's empathetic and highly emotionally sensitive. She loves to chat and tell stories and dance and move and be next to you. She's perceptive, and genuinely interested in how you're feeling and what you're doing. She needs a lot of positive feedback, and crumples at any negative feedback. She's fastidious about what she wears, often changing her clothes several times before leaving the house, and she spends a lot of time on her hair (though it doesn't always look like it). Girly! She's so loving, and needs so much love, affection, and approval.

Friends ask me if I see myself in my kids, and this is always a question I struggle with. Yes. No. Sometimes. Always. Never. These things that Nolie is blessed with and struggles with--big moods, attraction to drama, experiencing life so fully it's sometimes painful, hyper-attention to the reactions of others, total physicality, big caring, big self-focus--are so familiar to me. Though I have a hard time recalling much of my childhood, I remember experiencing all of these things from a very young age. And at the same time, I'm not Nolie. She's having her very own experience here on the planet. I can't know what she's thinking or how things are in her head.

I also have the same experience, identifying with Addie--the need for quiet, intense focus, introversion. The desire to make others laugh. The self-consciousness. The inability to control my limbs. Physical sensitivity. Artistic expression. Highly verbal. Sweet. Resilient. Stubborn. Struggling to find kindness. Not caring what others think about her appearance. Being a tomboy. Totally immersed in the natural world. An intense hold on people and objects. Some opposites, in many ways, of the things Nolie is blessed with and struggles with.

So maybe it's not so much that our kids become us, or even take after us (though they may). That's a whole lot to take on ourselves, and it denies them agency, free will, independence, self-expression. We impact our kids, certainly, but they aren't necessarily doomed (or delighted) to replicate who we are. Instead, maybe there is a suite of human experiences, and our kids go through those at different times and in different ways, according to their ages and personalities. And we have intense body, emotional, and mental memories of going through those things ourselves, so we see it and think, "There. She is like me," or "Aha. She is definitely more like her father." But maybe we're just remembering going through the world ourselves, and figuring it out, and we are noticing our children doing the same thing. How they handle those experiences may be informed by personality, which perhaps they get from us. But it's something else, too. Their own individual experience with life. So we just rub their backs and do our best to help them through the sadness, knowing they will fly through the good times on their own without our help.

And, finally, a quiet Sunday.

2011-11-06T14:48:00.000-08:00

I think Sunday mornings are just about my favorite things in the world right now. Sleeping in, having a cup of tea or--a real treat--a cup of coffee, eating a big breakfast. I woke up earlier than I would have liked this morning because I was a little sore from my second half-marathon yesterday and then I started thinking about the race and couldn't fall back asleep. Even though I didn't train for this one, it went really well. The running felt easy, it was a cold day, and I have the hydration thing down now. I really like running with my friends, which was something I never would have predicted. I'm nowhere near as sore today as I was after the first one. I still got sick about an hour after the race, and my crew (the Honey Badgers) thinks it's because I'm not eating enough right before I run. So I'll try that next time. But it was a good confidence-builder.

The girls have been missing me so I promised them each a date. Nolie got hers earlier this week when she stayed home from school because she had impetigo--a rash on her face, and feeling pretty sluggish. But not so sluggish that she didn't want to curl up with mama and do some crafts, watch a movie, and go have lunch at Noodles. Which is her favorite, and only, place in the world to eat out.

Addie got to have her date today. E. took Nolie to have her last soccer game of the season, and Addie chose to stay home, look through her bead collection, with me by her side observing and chatting, have lunch at Noodles (we're predictable, at least) and learn how to crochet. She chose a soft, pinkish-brown yarn, and is making her own scarf. Both girls stick to us like glue these days, probably due to the busy-ness of the past few weeks and the turning of the seasons. But I thought it was interesting that, given carte-blanche for their dates, they both only wanted to be close to me, quietly working at home. I'm sure in a few years that won't be the case anymore.

I won't have my feelings hurt that they didn't choose my home cooking for lunch.

After Nolie got home, she wanted to do what the big girls were doing, so I got her going on some finger knitting.

And pretty soon, while E. watched the football games, all the girls were busy working on their yarn crafts. A perfect Sunday.

Around Here

2011-11-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

For the first time in a while, tonight, I have a sense of well-being.

Don't get me wrong. Things have been good! I've had peaceful moments, happy moments, wild-ass moments, hilarious moments.

But walking out of Addie's room tonight, having kissed her good night, I had the feeling of everything being alright, Bob Marley-style.

I re-arranged my office, which I like to do after recovering from a stretch of over-work. This bout of over-work was stressful but fulfilling, and I'm getting better at telling myself that there's only so much I can do. I'm also, finally in this fifth year on the tenure-track, maybe getting a little better at what I do. The little bit of confidence helps. But it was a rough few weeks, nonetheless, and two of my best friends are having a heck of a time of it, and I wanted to be there for them and couldn't. My kids needed me, and I wasn't really there for them, either. The balance just tilted toward work for a while, as it does every now and then, and am so now I'm digging out.

I also sent out the email telling interested folks I have given up on reJuJu for a while, which I needed to do, because it hadn't really worked out the way I wanted to (I didn't have the time to commit, and it didn't gel enough to work out). And when you're stuck with something that's not working, I think it blocks up your creativity flows like a plug. Your big creativity butt has a plug in it. And everything you make feels like a big, stuck poo.

Something like that. Clearly I need to work on my metaphors some more.

The point is, when you fail, it's best just to look at the failure, acknowledge it, say your sorry's, and move the hell on.

Anyway, the studio is opened up, cleaned out, moved around, and I finally want to be in here without having a sense of guilt or of things undone or of piles of messes around. I'm actually knitting again. We're headed into the final third of the semester. Addie lost her second tooth in two days today, and Nolie has impetigo (go google image that one, if you'd like some nightmares). Or at least that's what the doctor said. We're somewhat unconvinced. It snowed five inches this morning. I'm reading Twilight, because I'm finicky about seeing movies before I've read books, sometimes, and the disc is up first in our queue.

That's the update. All is well. I have Halloween pictures to post soon, and the calendar has magically cleared for a few weeks. So there may be some hunkering down and cocooning and preparing for winter around these parts.

Man, I've Been Away

2011-10-24T16:25:00.000-07:00

I've been a way for a while. This has been an interesting period of transition for me, and I just haven't been compelled to write much. I'm not even journalling, and I've been a fairly compulsive journalista for a long time now.

I'm not even sure how to make sense of it or describe it, and it doesn't feel like a big deal, even though some of the changes are major. Like the remaking of my relationship to retail and sugar. That's pretty major. Like the commitment to running, and discovering this new world of racing, which is really fun. That's new, too. Deepening my relationship to God; carving out a somewhat new identity at work, in this last year before the tenure review; trying to show up in a more conscious way in all aspects of my life. Voicing how I'm feeling to Eric. Being patient with my need for down time.

All of this is rushing in.

Here is what has rushed out: shopping. Ice cream (at least in the same quantities as before). Shoving down anger or frustration. Not asking for what I need. Compulsively writing. Compulsively sewing.

Here's an example. I'm reading this little book called The Joyful Professor. Which is great. I really like it. The author asks you to take an inventory of yourself using a list she provides. One of the things I realized from doing that exercise is that I'm someone who likes being on the edge of too busy. This doesn't seem like a big deal, right? And also, duh! You all knew that about me a long time ago. But realizing that I'm the one who chooses to be on the edge of too busy, and that I like things that way, relieves some stress. It reminds me that I'm the one who invites this very full life in, because that's how I thrive. It reminds me I'm not a victim to others' demands on me. And it's a way of thinking about things such that I can manage which pieces are bringing me energy (starting new things I'm passionate about) and which don't (projects that aren't speaking to my real interests).

I'm not saying things are perfect. They never are, though I realize I've spent a whoooole lot of my life trying to make them seem that way.

I'm just saying: Hello. I'm here. I'm thinking through all this. I'm in a period of transition. Thanks for standing by.

Addie, In Short

2011-09-25T17:02:00.000-07:00

Addie is this little note, left for me after a long day at work:

You should try this recipe some time. I hear it's delicious. We'd be happy to lend you the large Milo toot and 90 Huge Addie Toots, but you're on the own for the rest.

Addie is also this, a self-portrait titled "Your Kiss:"

And she's this, a Grecian Goddess:

Yes, I finally sucked it up and made a Halloween costume for one of my kids. Mostly because I had all the material and wasn't about to shell out $30 for something I could make in a few hours. Of course, as always, she complained instantly that it was itchy:

That's my girl.

Siblings

2011-09-23T13:10:00.000-07:00

Today is a good day, because, you know, I'm ALIVE. And also, I got my hair colored, and getting rid of all that gray makes me feel a little more cheerful. Also, I finished TWO things on my to-do list that I didn't really want to do, and I have to time to read and maybe do a little puttering before the kids get home.

I've been reading blog stories to Addie at night--old ones, like from when she was two-and-a-half. I've never seen that child pay so much attention as she does to stories about herself, and it reminds me of how hungry I felt as a child for stories about myself. We have lots of pictures because my grandmother was such an avid photographer, but because of the struggles my mom went though when I was young, there are not many stories. Which I totally get. As you know, I have swiss cheese brain. If it weren't for the occasional musings of this blog, I'm pretty sure most of my kids' childhoods would be forgotten over the next few years.

[Side note that should not be a side note: My avid-photographer grandma, who you know as Ruby, is back in the hospital again. She was resuscitated, again. She had a car accident a few weeks back, bumped her head and got stitches a few days later, and then passed out without her oxygen in last week. Things are getting interesting].

Anyway, it occurred to me that in the early stages of this blog, I wrote a lot more about parenting. Mostly because I was miserable at it and couldn't figure anything out and just need to write and let it all out merely to survive. Things are so much easier and I feel so much more like myself now, after these last seven years, that it's hard to fathom.

In any case, I thought I'd post briefly about a parenting-related topic known as "Dealing with Sibling Rivalry."

Dealing with Sibling Rivalry in our house has primarily consisted of the following steps:

1) Sibling Brutality. Sibling brutality in our house usually looks like Addie and/or Nolie hitting, pushing, tripping, being mean to, saying something about, looking funny at, ignoring, and or otherwise annoying and/or assaulting one another. It leads to the next step, which is
2) Rivaling One Another for Mommy or Daddy's Attention. Otherwise known as tattle-taling, I'm Telling, or Mommy, Guess What Addie and/or Nolie Did To Me, and/or Wailing in Outrage.
3) Mommy or Daddy Flying off the Handle. At the end of his or her rope at these kids-who-won't-stop-bickering when all I'm trying to do is finish-this-article or boil-the-hops-for-this-homebrew, mommy and/or daddy attempts to adjudicate and/or figure out what really happened (good luck), yells at the kids to knock it off, separates them, sends them to their rooms, says unkind things under one's breath, and/or engages in the hallowed practice of the time-out. To varying degrees of failure.
4) Fallout. At this stage, kids pout, scream, fuss, and/or complain of things being "not fair," whatever that means.
5) Parental Guilt. In this culminating stage, the parent returns to whatever task was at hand, flustered and flushed, angry at his or her children for being inconsiderate buttheads to one another and angry at one's self for yelling and inflicting punishment because, after all, that sort of models the behavior one is trying to stop.

And, repeat. Sometimes, five minutes later.

This happened a lot in the spring. A lot. But I've been parenting enough now to believe pretty strongly in this little wisdom nugget: if something in your family dynamic is making YOU unhappy, YOU are the only one who can change it, and that change has to be in YOURSELF. Don't like how many socks are on the floor all the time? Well, you can drive yourself crazy trying to get people to pick up their socks, or you can just suck it up, pick them up, and then hide them in a secret spot and see how they like having cold feet all the time, tee hee. See, my problem was that I was trying to get my kids to change, and that is one particular effort at which I am doomed to fail. I also believe in modeling the behavior you want to see in your kids. This is so easy when you're engaged in bad behaviors, like sarcasm. I'm sarcastic, and then my kids model my sarcasm, see? But it also works for positive behaviors. It just takes longer.

So I decided my tack for getting out of the 5-stage sibling rivalry merry-go-round would be to model the calmest, most sympathetic, most compassionate and/or faux-compassionate behavior I could muster. I would no longer try to adjudicate the spats, nor would I punish anyone, nor would I get angry myself. Instead, I would become the lovingest and kindest comfort-giver you can imagine.

Treacly. Awful. Insincere. Totally against my fierce, honey-badger-like nature.

I know. But it has totally worked. So here's how it looks now, communicated via a sample dialogue:

Nolie: Mommmyyyyy! Addie just told me I don't look as cute as I think I look! And then she poked me in the arm, and look! I have a pinpoint-size owie there! Waaah!

Mommy: Oh, Nolie! I'm so, so sorry! That must have made you feel really, really awful. Give me a big hug. Do you need a bandaid? So sad!

Nolie: Wha...??

Mommy: You poor, poor thing. I love you so much. Addie, isn't it so sad, what happened to Nolie? Should we give her a hug? Nolie, what are you going to do now? Go work on your puzzle?

Nolie wanders off, completely befuddled, does puzzle. Addie wanders off, completely befuddled, goes to read.

Sometimes there are permutations, where you have to give them both the big compassionate whizbang, and you all end up hugging and oh-my-goshing, or where you have to deal with someone who is really hurt and then also give compassion to the one who really hurt the other one, which is hardest of all and makes you secretly wonder if you're going to raise a sociopath. But I don't think so. It mostly just diffuses everything, and I've noticed both increased peace in my neck of the woods and a slightly elevated respect for and kindness towards one another between the girls.

Problem of Sibling Rivalry Solved.

There. That's all you'll get from me on parenting for a while. Back to our regularly scheduled program.

Did I mention it's my seventh day without dessert? I know Pioneer Woman happens to be doing this, too, but that's a total coincidence, because I am my OWN WOMAN, dammit. I also believe this is some sort of Davies family record. I'm feeling very sugar-free.

Ah, yes.

2011-09-17T15:45:00.000-07:00

Running the Denver Half

2011-09-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Warning: This post is not for the squeamish of heart or body.

Derek helps me finish my first half-marathon, while Addie, Nolie, and E cheer me on. I would have died otherwise.

Here's the good news: I ran the Denver half-marathon this morning. I did this four weeks before finishing my actual training, and I ran the whole time (except when I walked for a few seconds at water stations to have a drink). My time was around 2 1/2 hours. I've never thought of myself as a runner, and certainly never thought I'd run a race like this one. So I'm proud of myself and happy I did it. I sharpied "Run with Love" on my arm, and "9/11: 13.1" as motivation, and those mantras really did help, especially at the hardest parts of the race, when the mantra changed to "love is running you."

The bad news is that for the forty minutes after the race I was sicker than a frat boy during pledge week. I threw up and shat out everything in my body. I'm still marvelling at how much waste one body can contain.

Lest you think I'm exaggerating, let me tell you that between 5:30 this morning and noon, I lost 7 pounds. The last time I lost that much weight, I shot a baby out my hoo-ha. I feel fine now, twenty minutes after throwing up six gallons of yellow gatorade, but would like to do a postmortem to figure out why this happened, because I want to do more races and want to be able to enjoy finishing rather than spending my celebratory time destroying a port-a-potty. Here is my analysis:

1. I wish I had had the few extra weeks to train, not just because I could have used some more endurance under my belt, but because it would have given me time to work on and think about some of the dietary/fluid issues that ended up being a real problem, and to do some more research about what actually happens at a race (this was my first race, other than that impromptu 5K at the girls' school last spring).

2. The race-diet mantra is "don't do anything different on race day." I knew this. I read it a million times. And yet, this morning when I woke at 5:30, I drank a cup of coffee. You all know I've mostly given up coffee. I usually have a cup of decaf green tea before my long runs. But for some reason I thought I could use the energy boost a cup of coffee would give me, and I also thought it would be great to ensure that I'd poop before the race, which I was worried about. Because trying to run with a brownie playing peek-a-boo sucks. This worked as planned, and I was happy, innocent, even. Then, after the race, I drank a bunch of yellow gatorade. Also not what I do after a long run, usually. I usually drink a water bottle full of water, take a shower, stretch, and then have a bottle of red gatorade later in the day. But I was really dehydrated when I landed on the finish line, so I hastily drank like a camel after crossing the Sahara and then inhaled way too much yellow gatorade, thinking it would help with the nausea. I fucking hate yellow gatorade. It makes me sick even when I haven't run a race. So I think these are the two big culprits for the subsequent shit-and-spin.

3. I didn't bring my own hydration to the race. Big mistake. According to the pre-race map, there were water stations every two miles. Not so on the actual course. Plus, I didn't stop at the stations and actually drink the whole cup of water (or two). I'd take a gulp and keep running. Dumb. I should have slowed down, walked for a while, and had a bunch of water. Or, better, run with my camelbak, like I usually do. I think I would have been able to keep my 10-minute mile pace had I done this. But I didn't, and I slowed way, way down the last five miles. Plus I had the post-race dehydration problem to contend with, which led to me throwing up an insane amount of yellow gatorade and pooping out everything I've eaten in the last four days.

4. Salt. I need to find a way to incorporate some salt into my runs. Probably just bringing a little bag would do it, but I didn't want to do anything new on race day that I hadn't done on a training run. Ha.

5. Experiment with different training styles. A lot of folks were doing a kind of 6-1 split, where they'd run for six minutes at a pretty good clip, then walk a minute to recover. I hung with these folks for most of the race, pace-wise, but I didn't see them lining up at the port-a-potties afterwards, so perhaps they're on to something. I'll experiment with some of these approaches next time I train.

Now that I'm sitting in bed, having showered and thus fully cleansed my system from the inside and out, I feel much better. I'll stretch soon, keep hydrating, and hopefully go for a mellow walk later. It was awesome having E. and the girls show up at mile 9 and at the end of the race, even though I couldn't even look at them because I was trying not to hork. I'm so grateful my friends Derek and Esther ran with me. I couldn't have kept running that last 2 miles if it hadn't been for Derek running with me. And I'm really, really excited to run the Bourbon Chase in a few weeks, another half-marathon in the spring, and maybe a marathon in the fall.

Some Things That Make Life So Much Better These Days

2011-09-08T16:40:00.000-07:00

Boy, I am feeling good these days.

Could you tell? I don't blog as much when things are really good, or really bad. It's hard to find the words, or too painful to write them down.

But not now. Things are humming at work, E is in a good place, the girls are doing their thing in the loveliest of ways. It's nice to be in a place where things feel good. It's not that everyday is easy, or even pleasant. That day a few weeks back where salary adjustments came out and there was some gendered hanky-panky PLUS we found out our after-school childcare situation was going to be twice as expensive as we had planned on and therefore we were going to have to pull out of it are just two examples that come to mind.

But things have definitely shifted in some profound ways, and I'm trying to put my finger on why. Here are my guesses:

1. We hit some sort of magic age-shift with the girls. You try not to hurry your kids along with the growing-up process because everyone tells you to "treasure these moments" and all that stuff. But I personally think those people are baby fanatics, and it's good to acknowledge that not all of us are baby fanatics. I mean, I loved my babies. I loved my toddlers. I miss their fat little hands and their warm, sleepy breath on my necks. But I don't miss the constant pull on my attention, my health, and my intellect that they had as super-young kids. I love that we can go to parties and the kids will go off and play with their friends and have a good time and I can do some talking to grown-ups. I love that I can have a conversation with them that leaves me interested and laughing rather than bored to death. I love that we can listen to pop music together without somebody melting down from sensory overload. They are much easier to take care of and much more fun to be around. And because I'm not so exhausted and depleted, I am more interested and active in their lives, rather than constantly trying to escape just so I can breathe.

2. I now work on Thursday nights instead of Wednesday nights. It sounds silly, but what a huge difference this has made! Wednesday meetings can start in the morning and I don't have to hyperventilate at the thought of working a fourteen-hour day, followed by two more days left in the work week. I can stay home and read and prep for class Thursday morning, or go for a long run, have my first class at 12:30, and then teach until 9 without feeling like I might die. And I don't have to teach on Fridays so I can write or have meetings and not be responsible for shaping young minds when I'm tired out.

3. I'm setting more of my own agenda at work. Without going into too many details, let's just say I'm working on a bunch of new projects that I thought up or initiated or thought carefully about before committing to. This reflects a new way of living in workworld for me. It's scary and totally fulfilling. I'm busy but it's a great busy, and that oogy feeling I used to have of feeling obligated to do something just because someone else thinks I should do it has really faded. I still do stuff I'm asked to do, but because it's not the primary locus of my work, I can do it with good feelings and not bad.

4. Running. I'm running the Denver half-marathon on Sunday, and our 200-mile Kentucky relay is in October. I don't run everyday, but I'm running pretty long distances, and while I hate that first mile every time I do it, I love the effects running is having. I'm less stressed, I sleep well, I have energy, and there is something empowering about doing something physically challenging every other day and not quitting. I feel physically fit and sometimes even powerful when I run. There's also the commitment training requires to take some time for yourself everyday to do the run. You commit to this even if you're facing a shitty, long day at work, or if it's raining, or 90 degrees outside, or if your tummy hurts. This is a useful spiritual and physical thing to do, and reminds you that the demands of work need not reign supreme. A running magazine I looked at recently said there is something valuable to be gained from forcing ourselves to be uncomfortable when most of our lives we work really hard to keep ourselves fed, temperature-controlled, well-rested, and pain-free. I think this is a privileged perspective, but there's also some truth to it.

5. Sleeping. That said, it is so awesome to get to regularly sleep through the night. I can't even tell you.

6. Locking the door periodically. It's not easy to find couple time when your kids are little. Your boobs are leaking milk, or you're exhausted, or you smell bad, or the other person smells bad, or you've just had a massive fight over who had to put the kids down last while the other person gets to watch The Daily Show. But then your kids get old enough to want to watch cartoons without you on Saturday morning or to sleep through the night, and you discover the lock on your bedroom door. There's finally enough of you left over to want to share with someone else. Having your bathroom redone to include a walk-in shower also doesn't hurt. Hubba hubba.

7. I take weekends off. I probably shouldn't even write this. People will judge. But I work a really solid 8 hours a day four days a week, and a 12-hour day one day a week, and I'm much healthier and productive when I have a real weekend. I know not everyone can do this. I know people work really hard for what they have and they sacrifice a lot. I did that for a lot of years. And now I don't, and it's an important part of my happiness. I'll keep it that way as long as I can, until I can't.

8. The year of connection. I remember my first year on the tenure track a tenured faculty member told me she had planned things this way: her first year on the tenure track would be the year of getting publications started, her second year would be the year of getting things in print, her third year would be the year of the grant, and so on. I was pretty impressed and terrified by this at the time. But now I think she probably should have had a "year of being a better friend and colleague" in there, too. Not that she isn't. What I mean is that I need to have a year of being a better friend and colleague. In fact, every year should be that year. So I'm really making that effort, and am constantly reminded how rich my life is in friendship and love.

I think that's it! There's also Boden's fall line of corduroy dresses and the weather cooling off enough to wear sweaters and boots and the amazing stack of books I'm parallel reading on my bookstand and facebook. These are all fun. And there's a lot of pain in the world, too. I know that full well.

I'm just saying things are good. That's all.

Not So Funny

2011-08-26T11:01:00.000-07:00

I should be vacuuming right now, but I'm not. It's been so hot that Milo is dropping hair faster than a starlet drops panties and there are tumbleweeds of dog hair blowing through my house.

Crude.

What I mean to say is that I'm discombobulated. Took the girls to the dentist this morning for their six-month check-up because I am a responsible and luckily-insured parent. I expected a clean report just like always. E.? Fine. Nolie? Fine. Myself? Fine. Addie?

Not so fine.

The kid has two cavities.

No.

She has one cavity and then a monster cavity.

Prepare.

Because that means she needs one filling, and one "pulpectomy." Otherwise known as a baby root canal. Otherwise known as making pulp of her sweet little gums, which have been hurting her for the last two weeks.

What could have caused such a thing?

Well, it turns out that while everything was totally fine one year ago, now her enamel is eroding at some sort of alarming rate. Dr. Jeff, who is a good dentist but not exactly tops in the charming department, informed me that it could be that we're feeding her too frequently.

Has he seen her? I can't get meat on that child's bones to save my life.

Anyway, "frequent feedings" might just be leaving gunk on her teeth too much.

I asked about sugar.

Cue: guilt, guilt, guilt. I'm the one with the sweet tooth and have often taken my family along for the ride.

I asked about protein.

Cue: guilt, guilt, guilt. I'm the vegetarian and really would rather not make chicken. Maybe having more protein would have strengthened my baby's enamel.

Also, I have not made Addie floss every night. I get tired around bed time and am sometimes a very lazy person when it comes to getting people ready for bed.

Things like this upset me. I hate to know that my kid is going to have to go through this and be in a bunch of pain. I hate to think there is something I might have done, or not done, to cause this. I'm also bummed about by this judgmental side of me.

Off to the specialty children's dentist we go, though, guilty or not.

After leaving the dentist's office this morning, we went and bought Addie Harry Potter 7, which she earned through good behavior (that's another blog post) and the girls were hungry, so we hit Whole Foods. Normally we'd buy muffins and juice. Today they just got to have a peach each.

peach each.

I was still feeling distraught, that uneasy and unidentifiable anxiety, and though I had child care for an hour, I thought about canceling and not going to yoga.

But I've been around my own nonsense for long enough to know that I needed to go. So I went. And here's what I realized:

I'm most upset by the fact that I can't control this situation. But, it's not as if I haven't tried to control things. So, welcome to your life. There will be things that happen that you couldn't prevent, my dear, and there will be pain and bummers and this is a useful thing to have happen because, again, you get to practice patience and grace.

I've calmed down a little bit. We'll see how I do when they give my baby laughing gas.

Random Cell Photos

2011-08-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

It's time for another installment of Random Cell Photos--pictures taken on my camera over the last few weeks that I'm only just pulling off now. The girls just had their first day of school today, E. gets back from Sweden tomorrow night (thank Christ) and I start classes tomorrow. I was a mixed-up ball of emotions today, swinging from excitement for my kids, to an odd bereavement at watching Nolie go through that kindergarten door, to fear that I had skin cancer (I don't, just a weirdo spot on my cheek), to annoyance with a coworker (so soon!), to gratitude for everyone I work with, to boredom at a meeting (so soon!). Anyway, on with the images.

Nolie, way back in June, at the beginning of the soccer season:

Perhaps hands-in-pants helps you to play better. We signed both girls up for more soccer this fall. Nolie is a beast on the field, going after the ball with much aggressiveness and focus. Addie likes to play goalie, which enables her to coach her teammates. They love that.

Shots from Bogota. Our hotel was art-deco-themed--the hotel was called Casa Deco, which we quickly changed to Casa Loco--and each room was decorated around a particular painting. Here was ours:

Baby on Mama. I remember how that felt.

From the tram up a very steep hill to Montserrate, a chapel at the top of a mountain overlooking Bogota.

The tram, seen from above:

Bogota, from Montseurat:

And, at night, after dining at a lovely french restaurant, where I mistakenly ordered a friend pate instead of stew. God bless my french:

My lovely, funny, and kind roommate for the trip, Chris, and my friend Juan, who is Colombian and an amazing interpreter, tour guide, and dance instructor:

Addie, holding the first of two teeth lost this summer. This was when E. was in Switzerland. She tried to brush it so it would be clean for the Tooth Fairy and ended up dropping it down the sink. She wrote a lovely note, though, and the Tooth Fairy still paid her for the tooth. The Tooth Fairy got very, very tired one night and forgot to pay her on the second tooth, however, and had to write a note of her own apologizing:

Everyone who knows Addie was relieved when she lost that little front tooth because that other front tooth is positively GINORMOUS and it looked a little strange:

Wicked fashion sense. Her face looks freaky here, but check out the fearless denim-on-denim action, paired with the Paper Moon hat:

Nolie, playing soccer on her fifth birthday, in her ladybug antennae:

Appreciating Rupert being outside my window every morning:

B.B. King, playing the Botanic Gardens at 85 years old, flirting with the ladies in the front row:

Girls, on their first day of school (Nolie, kindergarten, Addie, second grade):

And, summer? That's a wrap.

Transitions

2011-08-10T13:14:00.000-07:00

At yoga this morning our teacher reminded us all that this is a time of transitions, and that we will be better off if we can be mindful of that fact over the coming weeks, rather than wondering what the hell is happening to us.

Uh, no shit.

I registered the girls for school today--Addie for 2nd grade and Nolie for kindergarten. I'm getting ready to go to Utah for a few days to write/drink/hike/whatever with some scholarly-types (this will be an interesting experiment in socially working. Working socially. Working and socializing. I don't know). I get back Sunday and E leaves for ten days for Sweden. I have a week to finish prepping for classes, then school starts for all of us. I don't feel as crazy about this as I usually do (thank you, running. Thank you, prepping for classes early). But, you know, all piled up...it seems a little big.

Roundabout way of saying I forgot to post my usual birthday paean to my girl Nolie, who turned five on Saturday. Well, I didn't forget. I felt a little lazy (again, thank you, running). And unsure of what to say. Maybe a little weepy, too. I mean, check this kid out:

But there are some things I want Nolie to know about herself someday, about how she was when she was five, and they are these things:

You have a heart as big as the world. You speak whimsically and sweetly and openly about your love for me, your dad, your sister, your other family members and your friends and teachers. You want more than anything to be liked and loved by others, and when you are feeling unloved, you are openly devastated.

You taught yourself to read a few months ago. You explain it this way: "I decided that I wanted to read one day, and so I picked up a book and, well, I just did it!" That explains a lot about how you move in the world.

You believe in your strengths. You want to be a rock star, because you "love singing and dancing just sooo much." Or, you want to be a nurse, or a massage therapist, because "you know how to take care of people just right."

You are head over heels in love with Justin Bieber. "Baby" is your favorite song. You go on and on about how it makes you blush.

You are the pickiest eater on the planet. It drives me completely bonkers, and I worry about how you are going to survive on only plain pasta and crackers for the rest of your life.

You are kind. You are feisty. You have a light touch. You are a wrecking ball. Your personality is irresistible. You are relentless.

When I don't pay you enough attention, you break something, or hurt yourself, or do something otherwise "naughty" to get it. Then I use a harsh voice with you. Then you collapse into a million tears. Then we have a lovey moment of reconciliation. I'm sure I'm training you to have horrible relationship dynamics later in life.

You played your last soccer game of the season wearing your ladybug antennae, and scored three goals in a row. You are fearless, physically.

You have grown almost two inches since New Year's Day. You still have a sweet round tummy.

You are sleeping through the night most nights now. Thank GOD.

You miss your friends from preschool fiercely, especially Sophie. You are terrified of going to the new school. You are really excited to go to the new school.

You are still shy in group situations, and I have to always promise you that you can stay in my lap until you feel comfortable enough to venture off on your own. Then I can't get you back.

The big girls hurt your feelings a lot by not including you. More than anything, you want to be included.

But you are always a part of us, no matter what. You are so, so loved, my little bug. What a blessing you are, to all of us.

How to Love the Bad Mother In You

2011-08-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

Amy Pearson has a really good post up over at Martha Beck's blog on how to deal with the shame you feel for not being the perfect mother. I think it's good advice for moms who have a basic, healthy sense of themselves and of how to treat their children. For those who are struggling to be healthy, shame can sometimes keep us from doing things that shouldn't be done and I think can protect our children in some cases. But otherwise, and provided you are a healthy (i.e., non-violent, non-addict) mom, I agree with Pearson--if you don't bring your expectations and judgments out into the light yourself, they come out in other, weird ways you don't expect. Like, in my case, as back pain or overwork.

I think most of you know that I'm training for a half-marathon right now. This week's training schedule looks something like this:

Monday: 3 miles
Tuesday: 6 miles
Wednesday: yoga
Thursday: 6 miles
Saturday: 9 miles

I'm really enjoying the practice of getting ready for the race (even though I haven't actually signed up for a half-marathon yet, I am signed up to do a 200-mile relay with some friends in October). The interesting thing about running regularly and doing things like speed workouts and endurance workouts is that you have to sort of detach from your judgments about how things are going to go. Last Thursday I ran 6 miles, and it felt totally easy. I felt strong and fast and like I could go forever. It was actually fun. Yesterday, I ran 3 miles, and it felt like the longest, hardest 3 miles I've ever run. In the past, that would have been a sign to me that I was not a runner and should just quit, and I would have. But I don't really give myself that option now. Instead, I just get cool with the idea that I never know what the day is going to be like. I just know that I have to keep going and finish what I started out to do. And the dividends are nice: I feel less stressed because of all the exercise. I've lost a little weight (though not a lot, thank you, hormones). And I feel like someone who can do intense exercise without pain and without giving up. This last one is the best part.

But doing this much running is also something of a time commitment, and it has meant letting other things go. Things like having a nice dinner on the table every night. There have been nights that the girls have had hot dogs and apples for dinner and E. has had to heat up a burrito when he gets home from work because I just didn't feel like dealing. I think I would normally feel shame about this, but the running seems more important right now than the perfect healthy dinner OR the shame, so I've let both go. E. also has had to step up and deal with things like getting the girls to soccer on his own, which he hasn't loved. And he doesn't get why I'd want to run like this. So there's a little tension there. But it has otherwise been a good exercise in letting go of expectations.

Of course, it's a thin line between having a good new practice, like the running, and letting it add new stress to my life rather than relieve it. I don't know if I'll be able to keep it up once classes start in two weeks. I hope so. But if it becomes a new tyrant in my life, then I'll have to adjust that then, too.

Old Toddlerspit Posts Now Available for $9.99

2011-08-04T08:29:00.000-07:00

In case the three of you have nothing better to do and would like to go revisit all the good times (poop on the walls! exploding corn fritters! lighting my bathrobe on fire!) you can now check out vintage toddlerspit blog posts. My friend Kevin helped me transport everything from blog.com (blerg) to blogger so that I could get my blog-to-books printed up. The last few posts weren't loading pictures (blerg.com) but after that all the pics and comments are intact.

Anyway, here's the link...

My Latest Addiction

2011-08-03T10:41:00.000-07:00

This blog. She has Aspberger's, she's a famous career coach, and she's blogging about her long-term relationship with a farmer maybe falling apart at the same time she gives career advice. You might start with this particularly harrowing post.

I don't know what it would take for me to be that honest in this blog, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to go there.

A Longish Post on Dropping In

2011-08-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

Man, the times have been interesting lately.

I mean, there's all the outer stuff: the debt ceiling debate, in which the poor are completely erased from the discussion except as a means of extracting more and more from those who have less. There are the heat waves, discussions of Denver being the new Phoenix. There is football, which apparently is going to happen this year, thank God for E.

But also, interesting times on the inside. If I see you in person at all, I've probably unloaded on you in the first five minutes that I'm experiencing some sort of Total Hormonal Realness that I don't understand. It started earlier in the summer with some fun unexplained weight gain, nighttime hot flashes, and huge clumps of hair falling out, then marched on through the exciting terrain that is horrific chin acne, getting my period every two to three weeks, emotional loop-di-loops, and a libido that would make Larry Flynt blush.

Sorry, people. Just keeping it real.

I'm going to a new gyno tomorrow to have things measured and poked and prodded just to make sure this isn't some thyroid thing, or some sort of growthishness messing things up. I'm guessing it's not. All of those symptoms above have mellowed considerably in the last week. I'm guessing I'm flirting a little bit with peri-menopause, even though I'm kind of young for that. It does raise some interesting questions about what to do. I like being off the pill. Been off for a year now. But I'm not a fan of these new symptoms. So how to proceed is interesting.

One of the more annoying symptoms I'm having is a return to pregnancy brain, where all I'm really capable of intellectually is looking at the new Company Store catalog and watching Sex and the City reruns on VH-1. I'm doing my reading and writing for work, but it's slogging, painful, torture. My brain really just wants to waterski on the surface of life right now. It's not interested in scuba.

So I decided to go see Kate, my amazing tuning-fork-healing-touch-goddess, for my usual tune-up, and she did some sort of spiritual-endocrine flush on Monday, which gave me a very interesting set of cramps afterwards. I complained to her beforehand of feeling completely scattered, unable to focus. Delaminated. No actual laying on of hands of fluid manipulation occurred--this is all above-the-pants-type stuff. But whereas during my last session with her I "dropped out" into some other plane and listened to some beings having conversations around me, like I was a kid in some sort of cosmic beauty shop (interesting), this time, it took me forever to give myself over to the treatment. Monkey brain kept wanting to think about the new fall line at Boden (cute cord dresses) and about why Khloe Kardashian isn't getting pregnant.

But then, I became pancake batter. I don't know how else to describe it. One minute, I was getting angry at myself for not focusing on the treatment, and the next minute, it was like I had turned viscous and was being poured through a funnel onto a flat surface, where I just pancaked out. Everything mellowed, and then I noticed a pulsing ache in the ovary area. I became aware of having suppressed the ache for a long time. Kate wondered later if it has to do with some old injury I sustained. I don't know. Maybe around the girls' births?

Probably just my mind playing tricks. We'll see what the doc says tomorrow.

Except then this other weird thing happened. My friend Nancy responded a few weeks back to my sad Bogota post, emailing me something like, "you do have community, and I'm dropping off Krishna Das's book to you right now." And then she appeared with it, we had lunch, and she took me to church the next Sunday. She's something of a big-time blessing in my life.

Anyway, in case you don't know, Krishna Das is a formerly-Jewish guy who went to India and studied with a guru and now leads awesome chants here in the US. Nancy and I went and saw him a few weeks back (also her idea and her treat).

So I was chanting along to his cd this morning, which I've never done before even though I've had the cd for about a year and really love it. I usually just do yoga to it. The problem this morning was I felt like meditating but had antsy pregnancy brain and thought I'd try the chanting to see if that helped. Here's the song I did:

He's also a major blessing. And his book is very, very interesting.

Anyway, so I'm chanting, and I just drop in right away. This happens to me some times when I meditate. I'll meditate for a cumulative hours and hours with nothing, only struggle to stay in, and then POP, I'll drop in and be totally connected and get interesting messages and sensations and things. Then it won't happen again for a few years. Maybe if I meditated more regularly I'd drop in more regularly but that's for another post.

My point is that I dropped in this morning and my body started doing all this crazy gumby stuff. Like my limbs got all big then very, very tiny. My feet would seem to be right in front of my mouth and then would move miles away. I was elastigirl, or a Botero figure, or the Michelin man. I was all of those things. And it was totally effortless and refreshing and godly.

So, that's what's going on with me. Summertime, getting ready back to go back to school, running 25 miles a week, and dropping in to gumby-universe-land now and then.

Interesting times.

At the Denver County Fair

2011-07-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Sadie Found

2011-07-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

E. had to leave for Switzerland the day after I got back from Bogota, which was its own special form of torture. Anyway, he was gone for almost a week, and about half way in, Sadie disappeared. She was gone for three nights.

We have lots of coyotes that live over the fence from us. And a neighborhood fox. I figured the worst.

Miss Fluffy McFlufferton, otherwise known as the Suzanne Sommers of the Cat World. Also Known as The Marmot, or "That Fucking Cat."

I wasn't sure how I felt about this, to be honest. I mean, we just lost Prudence this spring, which sucked. You know how I felt about the Pru. It would have been sad and odd to be catless all of a sudden after having these two cats for ten years.

But I confess to some other thoughts crossing my mind. Sadie is one of the more annoying felines on the planet, to be frank. She pulls her hair out in huge chunks because of some anxiety disorder she developed as a kitten as a result of being left alone, unbeknownst to me, with a heroin-addicted housesitter (long story). We really only adopted her to keep Prudence company. Which I know makes us some sort of awful people, this privileging of one animal over another. I'm sorry. I'm just being totally honest here. We just never have really bonded with Sadie the way you might with a pet you love, like Pru or Milo.

And she has bad habits.

She wanders around the house at 3 in the morning, mewling as loud as possible, until we call out to her and remind her where our bedroom is. We've lived here for four years now.

She wants to be petted constantly. She bites you when you pet her.

We had her on valium and it mellowed her out a little. But not much. Plus, who wants to keep their cat on valium?

She is constantly bloated, making it a little icky to pick her up. Think "Hindenberg."

She scratches the furniture. Even the wood furniture. I may have dreamed, if only for a moment, of buying a new couch.

She misses the kitty box frequently. And we're talking turds.

But other than that, I like her okay. So when Eric got home from Switzerland at 10:30pm at night, after I texted him that Sadie had disappeared and we were catless, and I opened the door to greet him, and in one arm he had a suitcase and in the other arm he had Sadie, I had two thoughts:

One: My hero!
Two: Shit.

Dancy Pants

2011-07-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

I love dancing. I just do. We went out dancing in Bogota, just like we did last year in London, and like that one amazing night of oneness and total delightful humanity in Venice when I was 20, it counts among my best lifetime experiences.

I feel a little silly writing that because I'm not a "dancer" in the way you think of dancers, usually, their bodies long and lithe and their posture just right. But I dance all the time, and it's part of our family life and part of how I express and live in the world. There's Nia, which I haven't done much of lately because of my long Saturday runnings prepping for this crazy race, and then there's a whole lot of just silly dancing around the house, and there's just lots of random, spastic movement. God bless it.

My friend Ellen asked me what the name of the girl is, that girl I turn into when I get to go out dancing, that girl who has no trouble expressing sexuality and who stays up late and drinks too much and laughs and forgets herself totally. I said I didn't know, and she said I should ask her next time I see her. I will.

Anyway, I say all this because I hope that, in some small way, my amazing love of dance has been passed on to my daughters. Or, at least, to one of them.

Yeah, that's my kid.

I'm baaaack ?

2011-07-25T18:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't been sewing. For months and months. I don't know why. I just had no desire. I was getting worried that maybe it was just a little hobby I had for a while and now it was gone and I'd better figure out to do with all this sewing stuff I've collected. And then, this weekend, out of the blue, the longing to make something with my own two hands came back.

Out popped a little dress for Nolie, modeled on a little dress in Carefree Clothes for Girls:

An adorable book illustrating how I would dress if I was five. Or thirty-five. It's Orphan Annie chic. It's torn-up, raw-edged goodness. I love it. I wish I was a wee thing who could make myself these little whippets of fashiony delightfulness and parade around in my sweet lineny unfinished swirlypants.

Rhapsody over.

So of course I didn't follow the pattern and just cut up a shower curtain and a table cloth. I don't spend much time making clothes for the girls because they are rotten little stinkers who spill chewed up cherries on everything and screech at the tiniest little thread sticking out to scratch them, and the garment you spent hours on ends up wadded on the floor. Then you think criminal thoughts for a while before going and eating the last Dilly Bar. But I did kind of get into making this and, lo and behold, it's Nolie's new favorite dress:

Wee heart fashioned out of antique quilt top. Thank ye.

Nolie wouldn't stop doing this pose. It's her "I Love Justin Bieber" pose.

Also, this pose.

Pics thanks to Addie. Not bad for an hour's worth of fun on a hot Sunday afternoon, right?

Anyone want to guess how long that dress is going to stay white?

I am also a little enamored of a knock off I made of this skirt:

Here's mine:

It's a blue flowered jersey, and my ruffles aren't finished as nicely (I need to break out the surger). And I need to do some work on the shape. But I actually kind of like it otherwise.

You might also be wondering about that large wet stain on the front.

Well.

That might be where I spilled some chewed-up cherries.

Just keeping it real, people.

Anyway, I'm going to get some gray jersey and try again for the look and I'll let you know what happens.

Addie, Self-Portraits

2011-07-25T18:08:00.000-07:00

Post-Bogota Blues

2011-07-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

I'm dealing with a serious post-Bogota hangover.

Honestly, I wasn't that excited about going, at first. I'd never been to South America, so I knew it would be interesting to go, but we had just finished a bunch of little trips here, and my summer felt like it was already half gone, and I just didn't know how difficult or fun or sad or whatever the trip would be. I was tired, too, and wanting to just relax a little and get into some writing.

But, the trip was amazing. Way beyond, on every level--personal, spiritual, professional. And now, I've got the stuck-in-America blues.

Here's the thing: There were a lot of bummers about living in Bogota for a week. In a new city, I love to be able to go out and walk all around by myself and explore and that kind of thing and, well, that just wouldn't have been smart in Bogota (though, for the record, I never once felt in danger). Also, because of our conference schedule, we had to get up really early in the mornings and, because of my drinking schedule, I went to bed very late at night. So I didn't treat my body so great while I was there and it led to me feeling everything a little extra much and maybe being a bit weepy and sentimental. This was amplified by the fact of so many Bogota residents coming to our conference and sharing their stories, honestly, authentically, and beautifully, with us, who normally do everything we can to not be ourselves in academic settings.

Also, I ate a lot of white bread and drank a lot of coke. And wine. And beer. And I wore skinny pants out dancing without a tunic, just in a regular old shirt. A gringa pretending to salsa, big old booty out. All while speaking what my friend calls unethically bad Spanish. Without a care! Hola! Buenos dias! Dos minutos, por favor!

But Bogota felt alive to me in ways living here doesn't. It's got the big-city excitement going on, for sure, but the people also seem more alive, more part of the communal. Food comes slowly, one plate at a time, and late at night. There is fresh-squeezed juice with every meal (god bless lulos!). There is music coming from every window. Buildings are painted bright colors. Cars careen around corners. People talk loudly in the streets until late. Fat, happy dogs, teats out, roam all over the place. People juggle, people yell, people bike, large pieces of furniture balanced on the handlebars, up hills. Everyone hugs, everyone kisses.

Above all, there is a sense that you are not alone. For example, we visited one of the poorest parts of Bogota. There were some serious security concerns because of gang activities, so we could only go to certain parts. But while we were visiting one of the safer parts in Soacha, I had to pee, and my friend Juan took me into a bar to do it. The owner personally cleaned the bathroom before letting me use it, and sent his kid out to buy toilet paper, using money they really couldn't spare. And they wouldn't accept any money for it in return. I threw some on the counter anyway, and then felt like an asshole for it.

People steal each other's stuff in Bogota, even if you're just inviting them over for a party. You can get mugged. You can get kidnapped. But you can also be deeply cared for. And seen. And you are part of the people. For me, this was the largest truth of that city.

I think, sometimes, I find living here lonely. Or isolating. Or alienating. Something like that. Not all the time, but maybe now, in contrast to life there, for sure. Here, I'm one of those people stuck in a car, in traffic that doesn't move, in Fellini's 8 1/2. Bogota was my floating out and above.

I realize I was only there a week, and my perceptions are no doubt skewed toward the tourist side of things. There is no question there is a great deal of sadness and injustice in Bogota. It just felt more real, less simulacrum, than life here. I don't know how else to put it. And that dissonance is giving me the blues.

The Great Risk of Something Essential Perishing

2011-07-01T13:59:00.000-07:00

I had to end a long-lasting and productive but increasingly difficult relationship at work lately. I struggled through it for a while, trying to figure out how best to do it, what leaving would mean, how to maintain my integrity through it. It was so clearly the right decision from where I sit now, but wasn't always so clear at the time. I was glad to read this from Nepo's The Book of Awakening today:

Despite all consequence, there is an inevitable honoring of what is true, and at this deep level of inner voice, it is not a summoning of will, but a following of true knowing. My own life is a trail of such following. Time and again, I have heard deep callings that felt inevitable and which I could have ignored, but only at great risk of something essential perishing. [...] Courage of this sort is the result of being authentic. It is available to all and its reward, far more than respect, is the opening of joy.

Isn't that cool? Of course, the inner voice often doesn't speak clearly. It doesn't even speak English, in my experience! It shows up as back pain, weight gain, sleeplessness, anxiety, anger, frustration, mindless shopping, overwork, illness, and resistance, all of which can be explained away as other things (and they sometimes are other things, of course). Finding the "authentic" me isn't easy, either. But when you don't listen to it, when you don't express that essential self, it sure finds ways of making itself known, and that usually isn't pleasant.

Futzy, that inner voice.

The Weird Thing about Sleepy

2011-06-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

Being sleepy used to be like torture for me. It primarily happened around 3 or 4pm (duh, when it happens to most everyone) and it hit me like a ton of bricks. The worst was being sleepy and needing to pick up the kids from school. All I wanted was a few minutes to close my eyes and lay down and recover from the fucking day and instead I had to deal with cranky kids who also probably needed a nap but instead we'd be barreling down the freeway sniping at each other and hating all of it.

This led to a pretty decent caffeine and sugar addiction on my part. I mean, I've always had a nice sugar addiction going (Davies motto: dessert after every meal!) but the caffeine addiction just got progressively worse over the years.

Worse for me, anyway. I wasn't ever hooked onto the triple espressos every afternoon or anything. But I was pretty well convinced I couldn't get out of bed in the morning without coffee, felt bitchy if I didn't have my afternoon cup, and got nasty headaches if I missed either one.

I was reading the book Skinny Bitch last month, though, and it made some pretty interesting suggestions about caffeine and its affects on the body. You know me and the summer diet books. I have to read one every year or I shrivel up and die. Their message wasn't anything new, really: I've read plenty of books that suggest there are negative affects to caffeine addiction, but I never really entertained giving it up. Here's what I reasoned:

1) I could never, ever give up caffeine and don't you even try to make me or I'll kill you.
2) "Some studies show" a little caffeine everyday is actually good for you. I probably read this in one of those magazines my mom sent down.
3) I don't drink that much, compared to some people.
4) I keep my addiction affordable by reheating our drip coffee (I know, gross).
5) I don't have very many drugs and caffeine is my favorite and if you take it away I'll kill you.

But then, without a lot of fanfare or will power, I just sort of gave it up. I drink--sigh, I know, granola--decaf green tea instead. Here is what I've noticed:

1) I still get some afternoon sleepies now and then. I'm having one right now. But they are much less debilitating than they used to be. And the coffee never made them go away anyway.
2) I can really enjoy a strong cup of coffee now and then (I've had one in the last six weeks). In fact, the enjoyment is way greater now that I don't need it and don't have it every day.
3) My sugar cravings have decreased some. Somehow, it always just made sense to pair coffee with a baked good or chocolate. Imagine that.
4) Still, I haven't lost any weight from quitting. So that part might be hooey.
5) I pee my pants less. Like, a lot less. Like, I can run some miles without having to stop and pee. That's awesome.

But here's the biggest thing: I've had to come to terms with my sleepiness. And by that, I mean that, alongside the giving up of the coffee is an accompanying commitment to chilling out more. That has happened veeeeeerrrrry slowly and organically and over time, but working with less, shall we say, intensity, has made it so that if I'm a little sleepy in the afternoon, I lay down for a few minutes. I don't sleep often--I'm not a huge fan of naps because they make me groggy. But I definitely sit my ass down and do nothing for a bit. And, pretty quick, the sleepiness goes away and I go on about my day until my next little rest period.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still a little bit of a bouncing ball. But this rest thing is good stuff. It feels an awful lot like freedom.

Morning Redone

2011-06-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

So I get this text from E. some time last week, saying something along the lines of, "Drop-off was actually fine. I'm sorry I got so upset this morning, but can you help me with mornings, because they are driving me crazy?"

There's nothing Mama J likes more than being asked for help, if it involves redesigning a domestic system, right?

Ding.

So, here we go.

Our mornings, which I found incredibly pleasant (for reasons that are soon to become obvious) were clearly no longer working for E., who is typically (though not always) responsible for getting the kids off to school and/or camp. They looked something like this:

E. wakes at some ungodly hour, and instantly begins to ruminate about work. And is itching to get off to work as a result. But the three ladies in the house are still sawing logs.
E. pees, heads downstairs to feed the dog, who has already stuck his wet nose in our faces about sixteen times, and is followed by both the 90-pound dog and the annoying cat with her annoying meow. Frequently, E. trips over one of these obscene creatures and breaks his ass on the stairs.
E. brings me my coffee. I try to open one eye. Often unsuccessfully.
E. brings in one sleepy, grump-ass kid at a time to cuddle in bed while he harrumphs and/or goes off to shower.
Kids immediately fight over who is taking over the bed and who has had "mama cuddle time" vs. "dada cuddle time" and whether one is singing the lyrics to the Justin Bieber song "Never Say Never" correctly and who got more cookies yesterday.
E. drags the fighting children down the stairs (tantrums ensue) for a leisurely breakfast. And I do mean leisurely. We're talking Paris Hilton leisurely. The kids fight some more, this time over who got more Gorilla Crunch in her bowl and why we really have to eat lactose-free yogurt (protest punctuated by a loud FART) and who was mean to who.
E. drags the fighting children back up the stairs to get dressed/have potty time/brush their teeth/brush their hair/fight over who gets to have water fun day at camp vs. who has the lyrics to the Justin Bieber song "Baby" correct. One child typically shoves another child off a stool in the bathroom and someone ends up mildly concussed. At this point, I get my lazy butt out of bed and try to help somebody get dressed or put their hair in a ponytail because otherwise E. is going to engage in infanticide/wife-icide.
E. drags the fighting children back downstairs, wrestles shoes on to their feet, crams backpacks into the car, and buckles them into the car before silently weeping in despair. And that's all before the long trips it takes to get the kids dropped off, AND before a long day of work.
Meanwhile, I enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee, journal, and read, because, people, my day has BEGUN.

Anyway, E. has had it. So here's our new system, implemented this morning:

1. The girls are awakened by alarm clocks at 7am. Nolie gets Disney music and Addie requested NPR (?). They can have a few minutes to wake up in bed. E. and I also get ourselves out of bed, and make our bed, so that there is no cuddle temptation (alas, cuddling is now for evenings and weekends only). Luckily, I have given up coffee, and my other eye is slowly beginning to open, so this is easier than it would have been two months ago. Also, it's summer, and I'm not working like an ass.

2. The girls have laid out their clothes the night before. Before they leave their rooms, they get dressed, and then go do their hair. Then they get their own sorry asses downstairs for breakfast.

3. They eat. They fight. They laugh. They sob. Whatever. It's fifteen minutes.

4. They brush their teeth, go potty, get their shoes on, and go out to the car. Backpacks were also packed the night before.

Anyway, that's it. This morning's text from E. said "Best morning ever!" so I think we're on to something.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

I just have my decaf green tea and do my journalling after everyone leaves, guilt-free, and in peace and quiet. Much better anyway.

Addie, Summer

2011-06-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

School is OUT.

Rolling your eyes is IN.

Fishing and camping up in Golden Gate Canyon State Park.

Dog. Belly.

With Inspector Mama at the beach.

Learning to golf from Grand-Dad.

Hiking Torrey Pines, with Gwen. For whom there is no equal.

Hamming.

Goofing.

Being ironic.

As Cyrano de Bergerac.

As America's Next Top Model.

Again, with the beloved (ahem. Could someone puh-lease move this child OUT here?).

Thoughts on Mama's advice. No irony this time.

In Laramie.

In Pinedale.

In Jackson, with cousin Kiara, Nolie, and Aunt Heather.

Hi Nana Gloria and Kamille!

At Old Faithful.

I love you, little bird.

Nolie, Summer

2011-06-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

Saying goodbye to our beloved preschool teachers Bill,

and Thea (Gaby already left for Peru).

One of her favorite things to do (she's always loved to be rocked, and spun, and swung, and now she can do it herself!).

One

two

three.

Chilling in the swing, with popsicle, boning up on some knock-knock jokes. Nothing better.

Running past Grand-dad's orange tree

and smelling Ubi's roses.

At the beach.

After swimming.

With Aunt Nanny and Addie.

With cousin Raiff.

In Laramie.

In Pinedale.

In Jackson, with cousin Ben, Addie, cousin Kiara, and cousin Kamille.

At Old Faithful.

I love you, little bug.

Mom in Green

2011-06-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

I flew home a few weeks back, just for one day, so I could surprise my mom for her birthday (or, at least, a few days before her birthday). I snapped a few Droid shots of her one morning--she came down from her bedroom wearing all green--a green top, slacks, and cute little loafers. Plus some green jewelry:

I don't have very many recent pictures of her, and certainly haven't posted much on this blog. Probably because I thought I lost her there for a while, and consciously or otherwise have kind of held her at the margins, maybe protecting myself, maybe trying to see where things were at.

Because, from one vantage point, things could seem pretty precarious. She's still in a persistent state of pain, because that one knee has never healed, not even after a second surgery was supposed to make it right, and she's understandably quite freaked out about going in for a third surgery, which means more meds, more recovery, more pain, and all for a not-very-certain outcome. I don't think she ever will go in to get things "fixed." So my mom is 61 and is looking at being in chronic pain for the rest of her life, and really has to just take each day as it comes. And my dad, though cancer free, is also in precarious health for other reasons, and is 13 years older than mom, so I think my brother and I just watch and observe and hope this period of maintenance, of maintaining whatever fragile equilibrium we have, lasts as long as it can.

Or, from another vantage point, I could appreciate how solid things are, given everything that's happened, and appreciate my mom's strength (which is something that was very important to her during her breakdown--that I see her strength). Mom sends me boxes of her old magazines every now and then--stuff I wouldn't normally buy but like to read (More, O, Better Homes and Gardens--bathtub reading). And as I read them I will see excerpts of articles she has underlined, and I enjoy seeing the underlines, and wondering what she has thought. It occurs to me now I should ask her.

She has underlined bits about finances and retirement; staying married for long periods of time; and especially lots of underlining about how to survive pain, and how to appreciate each day. When I see these I'm reminded of what my mom's everyday life must be like, which I don't see much of, and how brave and strong she is to make it through each day given everything she has been through.

Mom can be difficult sometimes--she gets pretty easily caught up in the drama of little things that happen, and she can be short-tempered. Maybe a little disconnected from what I feel is "reality"--she's a little isolated. Moreso now that she is in pain a lot. But, these words could also be used to describe me, or any of us at certain times. So this morning I am just appreciating everything my mom did to bring herself back from the brink, and to be a part of our lives as best she can, and to get up everyday, despite the pain, and get so conscientiously dressed, to be active, to live a good life anyways, and to love.

Gratitude for Grambie

2011-06-15T07:13:00.000-07:00

The girls really love visiting their Grambie (E's mom) because she always has cool stuff for them to do, and they just end up having a big mutual love-and-appreciation-fest. Once, she taught them how to make paper dolls from cardboard and old magazines (right up Addie's alley). Or she'll bring new paints for them to work with. Or kites.

On this visit, she brought one of those big bubble-makers. See?

Feeling lots of gratitude this morning for bubbles, and for Grambie.

A Day at the Beach

2011-06-10T11:40:00.000-07:00

I had to spend a few days in a meeting for work this week, and every few minutes my laptop would sleep, and the screensaver would revert to all the pictures on my hard drive. There were pictures of babies playing:

And babies sleeping:

And being gorgeous:

And cheeks:

And Lord, I just wanted to hold some baby for awhile, and smell that little head, and nuzzle those fat cheeks.

I don't want another baby. I want my babies. Just for a little while. Just for an hour, maybe while they're sleeping.

But then I left work and took the train down to San Diego to meet my family, which no longer has any babies. And, you know, our day at the beach would have been very different if things weren't exactly as they are now, exactly as they're supposed to be.

There's Just Something about Cousins

2011-06-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

And also, grandparents.

Martha on Work

2011-05-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

Here's what Martha Beck tells me this morning:

"If your happiness and your work aren't the same thing, you're doing the wrong work, or working the wrong way. Change."

Mmm-hmmm.

On the Way Free

2011-05-26T18:16:00.000-07:00

It's remarkable how easily I forget that I'm free, you know? I mean, for a while there, I was really stuck in the grind, and was carrying on as if I had to be stuck in the grind, and in one particular grind specifically.

My friend T. got me a gift certificate for a massage for my birthday, and I just yesterday cashed in on it. I'd been working a problem over in my head all week, hoping to see the truth, knowing I was in the muck, and that it was a productive muck, but with no idea how it would all be resolved. And then, as the massage therapist was working out the knots in my back, it all became incredibly clear. I am free, and can disentangle myself from the other knots--the metaphorical ones--I had got myself caught up in. And I actually laughed during the massage, and thanked the therapist for getting those darn knots free.

Funny how the entrapments were tied up in my back like that. Funny how the three extra pounds I'd magically put on this semester and couldn't seem to shake just disappeared after. Funny how the heaviness in my legs left and I was able to feel gratitude again.

Funny.

I picked up Nolie at school early the other day, and there were still a few little kids sleeping on their cots, while their classmates and teachers were busily and noisily milling all about, doing their work, playing together. They were like little oases in a sea of cheerful chaos.

Another useful metaphor. To be a little island, still, amid the swirling blue. Entering the chaos upon waking, and returning to peace when necessary.

Forgive the generalizations and allusions. It's not easy to write about work and my relationship to it in specifics here. I hope I've made some sort of sense. The freedom is the main thing, the knowing I wasn't trapped, didn't even realize I had felt so trapped, until the way became clear.

Grace and grace.

Stooges

2011-05-22T19:07:00.000-07:00

Nolie Love

2011-05-22T19:04:00.000-07:00

Nolie, sprawled out across my lap: "Mama, do you love me?"

Me: "Oh, yes. I love you just about more than anything. You, and Addie, and Daddy."

Nolie, sitting up, smiling: "Well, make sure you give some of that love to yourself!"

How Far to Push

2011-05-19T17:55:00.000-07:00

I think I know the answer to this conundrum, but when I most need answers to problems like this is often when I'm least able to marshall my resources and remember or find them.

The last few weeks have been one long push...to finish classes, to finish grading, to prepare this workshop we're giving today and tomorrow, to redo the bathrooms, on and on. I've finished everything except for one last paper, not even started, but due in rough draft form to conference reviewers on Tuesday. It doesn't have to be perfect or even very good. It just needs to hold my place until the final paper is complete, to be submitted at a later date. Rough drafts for conferences are often just evidence of good faith efforts. It's not a big deal. I should be able to get it done.

Except that every fiber of my being doesn't want to do it. Once this workshop is done tomorrow, I want to be done, and that's it. I would like to take next week off before all the conference travel and summer writing begins. I feel burned out, and grumpy, and am having difficulty expressing myself in useful and kind ways. I don't want to do anything but lie on the couch. I can't assess what is happening around me, or determine what is important.

I am worn. The fuck. Out.

Or something.

This doesn't seem like a big deal, right? I should just write the paper, or take the week off, whatever. But it's symbolic of the larger battles that wage in my head between whining, overwork, self-care, rest, and rejuvenation.

In one corner is the voice that says it is not the end of the world if I don't get this conference paper in. Conference papers don't count for much in my professional world (though I find they are useful for many things): publications do. I can afford a week off and nobody will die. My career will not die. I will come back a better writer, a clearer thinker, a more cheerful colleague, a more loving wife and mother. This focus on over-productivity is a product of globalization, neo-liberalism, and an insane capitalist society that only cares about how much work we can produce.

In the other corner is the voice that says I must keep my commitments to work, above and beyond mental and physical health concerns. That voice reminds me of colleagues who seem to work much harder than I do and who don't seem to take vacations. That I'll be letting my co-authors down if I don't get that paper in. That I am weak. I'm taking shit from people all week who just assume I have the entire summer off to laze around like some fat-cat professor and it pisses me off and I want to prove them wrong (because they're wrong). At the same time, there are people in other jobs much harder than mine working much longer hours and under very difficult conditions and who don't complain half as much as I do. I am a big, spoiled, privileged baby.

Boy, when those two voices battle it out in my head, it's deafening. It's war of the worlds in there.

But writing them out, here, I just realized that I'm not going to write that paper. I'll write later this summer, and maybe some of it will be publishable, and it will be good. But I'm not writing that paper. I'm taking next week off.

Thank you, dear blog readers, for the free therapy session.

I'm going to bed.

Catching Up

2011-05-17T12:52:00.000-07:00

The longer you stay away from the blog, the harder it is to come back to it. But here I am. I think I got a little burned out for a while there because I was having to keep up with 35 student blogs a week and a class blog during the semester, and then there was the everyday-ness of the joy project, and also I have been really tuned in to writing the artist's pages every morning (and sometimes at night too) and so the blog has been backseat.

And, too, it's hard to figure out what to write about. I'm in task mode, trying to finish up all the large and small work projects before summer begins. We're doing a lot of traveling, for fun and for work, and I have deadlines to meet before that, and there is a lot of writing to be done, too.

Addie is finishing up her first grade year, and is trying to figure out how to handle her body. She's all loves and hugs and kisses, but also elbows you in the nose every five seconds, or headbutts you in the gut, or sleepwalks into your room in the middle of the night, naked as a jaybird and wondering where she is. Nolie is in regression-land, whiny and fussy and weepy, as we careen toward the end of her preschool years. I think it's hard for all of us to think about leaving that amazing school where both girls were given so much love and attention and such an amazing start.

E. is working a lot, and pitching in a lot because of my weird-ass schedule. He has to go back to Switzerland soon, and Sweden.

I'm running again, finding that if I don't pound out a couple of miles everyday I get pretty irritable from the stress of tasking. Our bathrooms are getting redone, starting tomorrow. We're holding our faculty workshop--the one we've planned for all year long, on engineering and social justice--at the end of this week. I have two days to write a conference paper next week.

In the last two months, I've kicked my shopping addiction and sugar addiction, with the help of reams and reams of journal paper and my tuning forks healer. Those addictions reach as far back as I can remember and are so deeply ingrained in who I am I still walk around in wonder at times that I am free from them. In the last two weeks, I've edited a thirty minute video for our workshop, reviewed two journal articles and a book prospectus, completed a revise-and-resubmit, finished final grading, planned summer vacations, designed our new bathroom, and purchased about a million and one birthday presents (what is UP with May?). There have been research interviews and research meetings, retirement parties, graduations, much whining on Facebook, and I've started reading two new novels and a book about climate change. I painted my nails black for a few days and tomorrow I'm going to get a haircut.

Okay, then. That should cover it. I think we're all caught up. Can I come back now?

Rivers and Roads, or Blisters and Toads?

2011-05-09T08:50:00.000-07:00

What a great mother's day weekend. We got to go see The Head and the Heart in concert in Boulder on Friday night. Let me tell you, you would be a damned fool not to download their album. It is so full of goodness and wonder, and we've all been singing this song at the top of our lungs all weekend:

Been talkin' about how things change

My family lives in a different state

If you don't know what to make of this

Then we will not relate...

Saturday we got to rest and hit some daytime party adventures, and then on Sunday we did this:

Rather, E. did that. See, he went in to fix the girls leaking tub faucet last weekend, but the pipe was corroded and broke, and so then he had to tear the entire 1970s mustard-colored fiberglass bathtub-shower monstrosity out.

We decided that while we're at it, we'll get the master bath redone, too.

Goodbye, summer salary.

While E. was doing that, the girls and I made this:

We call it our "giant pile of crap that we made in the backyard when we decided to begin dismantling our rotting deck which we can't afford to replace this summer because of that pipe that broke in the bathroom."

Happy Mother's Day to me!

Also, there was french toast in my bed yesterday morning. That's a good thing. There were homemade gifts, my favorite, and some flowers appeared during the day. There was also a lovely picnic at the Clear Creek Beach. Sushi was involved.

All in all, it couldn't have been a more perfect weekend.

Conversation among Sisters

2011-04-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

[pffffft]

Addie: Nolie, you know when you're older and married, you're not going to like toots and poops so much.

Nolie: You don't know that.

Addie: I do know it.

Nolie: It's not true.

Addie: Is so.

[pfffft]

Nolie: Is not.

Urgent Silliness

2011-04-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

Why yes, yes we did end up back in urgent care just one more time last week, before E. got home from Switzerland.

See, we invited one of Addie's friends over for a playdate, which was great! We had dinner and did a little crafty thingy and then the girls played upstairs for about 20 minutes while I cleaned up and had some tea.

It was a little bit quiet up there.

I enjoyed, rather than investigated, that quiet.

Anyway, then we had to take our friend home, since it was a school night. Everybody was bundled into our nifty microvan Shakira, and was happily reading poems to each other. We are poetry nerds around here, so this is totally normal. Look away, everyone. Nothing to see here.

Except that Nolie was sniffling. Like, a lot. A LOT! And even though I was tired and sleep-deprived and pretty out of it, I happened to notice this crazy sniffling. And so I asked, Nolie, how come you're sniffling? See, I got instantly worried she had found some paprika or something, some hidden paprika stash that I did not know about, and that we were having a reaction again.

We were not.

Instead, we had decided to put a silly band up our nose.

Yes we had.

Silly bandz, in case you don't know, are elastic rubber-band-type bracelets in various shapes that the kids love to wear in multiples on their little wrists:

They also come in ring sizes. Which I'm grateful for, elst the night could have turned out differently.

I started laughing and crying at the same time, of course, and by the time we got to our friend's house at about 7pm I was begging them to help me get that thing out of her nose and, like good friends, they said they would.

But we couldn't. We had her blow and blow and we used a flashlight and though I could feel it when I squoze her little nose up high, we couldn't see it or get it out.

So, off to urgent care. Where they stuck myriad forms of instrumentation up my baby's right blowhole. and couldn't get it out. And couldn't get it out. And couldn't get it out. And then started talking about knocking my baby out and doing a little surgery. And she was grabbing me and sobbing so hard the whole time and I could tell she wasn't quite all there with us from the trauma but I told her we were taking a little break and there was snot pouring out of her nose and the doctor gave her a tissue and told her to try blowing one last time and it came right on out.

We were in bed by 9. And that was our second trip to the urgent care during the week that E. was gone to Switzerland. And yes, I did keep that thing. I figure it can be her "something blue" when she gets married.

P.S. On the way to school the next morning, Nolie informed me that she "always puts silly bandz up her nose, but this was the first time it got stuck!" Which, I guess, might solve the mystery of her unpredictable nose snifflies that we thought were maybe seasonal allergies but didn't respond to allergy medicine. Hmmm.

Myers-Briggs

2011-04-23T20:50:00.000-07:00

So, I've never taken a Myers-Briggs test. I realize I'm probably the last person in America not to have, but in reading Fried, I decided to take one. You can take one here, if you're interested.

I'm totally shocked, to be honest, because for one thing, I came up as a "Provider," which I never would have guessed, and then reading my "how providers deal with stress at work page," it's pretty much so dead on as to be scary. I'm pasting it here so that I'll read it again.

Dealing with Stress from Work: Guardians Bearing Up

How do you deal with work-related stress? Each personality type has different stressors and copes in different ways. Better understanding of your own stressors and coping mechanisms can help you reduce the tension and anxiety work stress often creates.

When stressed, Guardians usually report being sick, tired, sad, or worried.

Of all the Guardians, the Supervisor tends to take on the largest amount of external authority, responsibility, and pressure. When they've overdone it, their only recourse to relieving these pressures is to become sick. Of course, they don't choose to become sick, it is simply their body's response to the overload. They want to be recognized for their accomplishments and contributions. They want respect more than they wish to be liked. They will work harder and harder to earn this respect. They are drained by overly emotional responses to their directives. If disrespect continues for a long period, they may become hypersensitive to their feelings and that of others. To return to equilibrium, they need silent support from others, to cut back on responsibilities, and to practice healthy living by exercising and eating better. Says Dirk, "I learned a lesson when my doctor reported that I had high blood pressure and I needed to cut my stress level. I started to delegate more and not jump when any new opportunity for responsibility came up. I thought that was the only way to advance, but I'm getting better work from those I supervise and getting more respect from management since I became more relaxed."

The Inspector is the most likely to complain of being tired. They have a greater need for private time than the Supervisor. They, too, will assume a great deal of responsibility. Their need to be exacting coupled with too many drains on their time can lead to their becoming stressed. They can become obsessed with details and criticize their underlings or co-workers for imperfection. They can become fearful of anything that is not well-proven, tried-and-true. If they become impulsive or talk excessively about potential catastrophes, they are showing high stress. To return to equilibrium, their concerns need to be taken seriously by others and efforts need made to reduce their workload and give them more private time. Says Janice, "I find that if I keep taking on new responsibilities, I'm less effective and much more tired. My husband finally laid down the law that I needed to cut back, so I did. I enjoy my job more and my home life has improved."

The Provider is the most likely to first become angry, then sad and complain to anyone who will lend them an ear. This is quite different from their normal style of spreading happiness and making everyone around them comfortable. What triggers the stress is when others do not trust them or when they experience too much pressure to conform to a standard with which they do not agree. Interpersonal conflict with a boss, co-worker, or underling also takes a toll on the Provider's equilibrium. When stressed, they may become excessively logical and critical in their dealings with others. To return to normal, they will need less pressure from others and more solitude. Sometimes writing in a journal will help them with their sadness. They may need coaching in how to deal with adversity and decrease their need for harmonious relationships. Changing the people they interface with may help. Says Haime, "I had to learn to be more tolerant when I'm in conflict with another. I was lucky to have a mentor who helped me through a conflict with a co-worker. He advised me that most bosses don't like to deal with conflicts between co-workers. He helped me loosen up and find a way to be less intense when dealing with conflicts. It's helped a lot."

The Protector is the most likely to become excessively worried. Their highest skills come from preventing problems, and to do that one must think about what might go wrong and prevent it. But too great an overload can trigger excessive worry. Being forced to face too many new experiences can be daunting to the Protector and cause them to talk about potential catastrophes. They may experience a loss of control and even become impulsive while trying to fix all that they see going wrong. When others see them in this state, it is important to give them help and to lower their expectations about always being able to prevent every problem. Until they release some of their need for control, they will experience high stress. Rest, good nutrition, and treating themselves to peace and quiet will go a long way towards healing their stress. Says Barbara, "I was lucky that I had a boss who could see that I was too tightly wound up and worrying too much. She helped me evaluate what was important and what was not so I could let go of some of the fine details and find a better balance. Work is more comfortable for me now."

Don't Carry It All

2011-04-21T07:51:00.000-07:00

It was just a little hard to open my peepers this morning. Bedtime wars with Nolie again last night, though after waking at midnight and crying for a while she finally fell asleep in her bed and stayed there until morning. My back hurt from sitting all day yesterday. Faithful feedback mechanism.

But there was coffee, and then the rain came down in great, pounding sheets. We skyped with E, who is using someone else's computer and comes through as user "Luca Piazza." We enjoy saying that, over and over.

On the way to drop the kids off, the sun broke through, and the mountains were covered in fog, and every last thing seemed unbelievably green--the pregnancy of spring. Nolie and I were quiet in the car, just looking at it all, sleepy but grateful for the startling beauty of the morning.

This is my anthem for the week. Death, rebirth, surrender, acceptance, giving. It's got it all. Give it a listen.

Here we come to a turning of the season,
witness to the arc towards the sun,
the neighbors blessed burden within reason,
becomes a burden borne of all in one,
but nobody nobody knows,
let the yoke fall from our shoulders,
don’t carry it all don’t carry it all,
we are all our hands in holders,
but meet this bold and brilliant sun,
but this I swear to all

A monument to build beneath the arbors,
upon a cliff the that towers towards the trees,
but every vessel pitching hard to starboard,
lay it’s head on summers freckled knees,
and nobody nobody knows,
let the yoke fall from our shoulders,
don’t carry it all don’t carry it all,
we are all our hands in holders,
beneath this bold and brilliant sun,
this I swear to all, this I swear to all

Buried wreath of trillium and ivy,
laid upon the body of the boy,
lazy will the long come from it’s hiding,
return his quiet certitude to the soil,
so raise a glass to turnings of the season,
and watch it as it arcs towards the sun,
and you must bear your neighbors burden within reason,
and your labors will be borne when all is done, and nobody nobody knows,
let the yoke fall from our shoulders,
don’t carry it all don’t carry it all,
we are all our hands in holders,
beneath this bold and brilliant sun

and this I swear to all
and this I swear to all
and this I swear to all

to all
to all
to all

Today I Don't Like Anyone

2011-04-20T20:13:00.000-07:00

I'm reading a book called Fried: Why You Burn Out and How to Revive by Joan Borysenko. I believe I purchased this book for the Kindle while waiting in an airport to go somewhere to do something for work, in tears because I wasn't quite sure where I was going or for what and I just felt tired and need some answers right then.

But, ironically, I was too tired to read the book and it just sat there, taunting me.

So, months later, I am finally, slowly reading it. It's an interesting book. Not fantastic, but useful. For example, Borysenko says that one of the symptoms of being fried is that you lose your ability to enjoy things--pleasure is harder to come by. This differs somewhat from depression--you're still able to function, you still seek out joyful activities. You just can't enjoy them. You can think of the moment in Eat, Pray, Love where Julia Roberts goes on and on about not being able to taste her food because something in her life is missing, so she has to go to Italy to have pasta, etc., etc.

The way being fried manifests for me is that I fall into deep wells of self-pity, task-counting, and disdain for all people including myself. Also, I make lots of little mistakes that enrage me. At myself.

For example, when I'm fried, I enter into thought patterns about how hard I have it. Now, I know I don't have things hard, objectively speaking. My life is full of joy and blessings on a regular basis. Not that I don't struggle--Lord, how do I struggle in my own sad little ways. But most of the time I'm able to really appreciate all the good things and enjoy them. But when I'm fried? Nuh-uh. Everyone has it easier to me. I find this a particularly appalling quality in myself, and I feel like everything I say comes out sounding like one big whine. It's awful.

Related to that, I task-count. I make lists in my head of everything I've had to do today and all with no help and this is going to go on forever and something has to change now or I will fucking freak out! All this is said in a very demanding voice in my head. Threatening, even. Like somebody better save me from myself, or they're going to get it! Sometimes these little internal diatribes leak out my mouth. This is always unfortunate.

Third, I dislike everyone when I'm fried. I was in a meeting today which, to be honest, was the last place on the planet I wanted to be, and my good friend and colleague said something, and I reacted, and you all know how good I am at hiding my emotions, and he kindly said he noticed from my "body language" that I disagreed with him, and I wanted to smack him and tell him, "no, it's YOU I don't like." But I DO like the guy. Lots. I was just out of kindness at that particular moment.

My bucket of kindness, as Nolie would say, was empty.

And finally, I do stupid things I wouldn't normally do when I'm fried. Like drop the kids off and leave the car to go walk the dog, but leave the lights on and toast my battery. Which will make it so I can't shower before a very long day, and definitely have no time to sit with my coffee and journal, like I had hoped. Which only adds to my friedness, because I like 20 minutes of quiet time before starting the heinous 10-hour workday Wednesday, and when I don't get it I have to pull over to the side of the road because I'm crying very, very hard and can't see through my tears.

This leads me to forgetting to pick Addie up at the right spot after school, which makes it so I'm late getting the kids home, and a new (male) babysitter whom I've never met is watching the kids so that I can teach class, and so I have to order pizza for all of them and go to class with kale in my teeth.

You get the idea.

I'm doing two more of these Wednesdays, to finish the semester, and then never again. I'm done with it. I realize being fried is a byproduct of being a professional these days, and that it will happen once in a while. I get it.

But it doesn't have to be a way of life. Because you know what? My day was actually filled with kindness--somebody jumpstarting my car, people asking after Nolie (who is just dandy, by the way), people laughing with me, hugging me, being on time, being kind, absorbing my negative energy and not sending it back my way. I just couldn't really appreciate any of it because my bucket of kindness was really, really empty. I need a refill, and that will take a little free time and disengaging from so much of this doing all the time.

As Mark Nepo would say, there may have been clouds over my heart today, but that doesn't mean the sun is gone forever. I'll try to remember that.

Joy 29: Project Recap

2011-04-18T07:45:00.000-07:00

I was hoping to make it to Joy 30, to do a full month, but I was too busy having fun this weekend to do both posts. That's a good problem to have, I think, don't you?

I've had so many treats this week, so many little ways people have reminded me that they are there, and they love me, and that I am so blessed! There were many very large coffee drinks, which I usually don't splurge on but very much enjoyed:

This one was as big as my head. Don't know if you can tell that from the pic.

There were also many gifted extravagant luxuries that blew my mind: spending money, a cardigan fit for a goddess, gift certificates for massages and dinners and dance lessons, gorgeous spring flowers, books, and vodka.

And friends and friends and friends and food.

And laughter.

It was one of the best birthdays ever, and I've had some great ones. This was my best year so far, too (and I think I said that last year!) so it was a wonderful way to end that.

I won't belabor the fruits of the joy project overly much. But it was fruitful. I am definitely happier now than I was a month ago, when the blues felt heavy and oppressive. Here are just a few quick observations:

1) Looking for joy, and praising it, increased my joyfulness.

2) There is something philosophically and spiritually significant about consciously making room for joy in one's life. This might mean creating opportunities for joy (having a hot bath, making time for a long walk, stopping work so as to be with my family, blogging) or simply noticing the everyday joy of life (listening to Nolie sing, appreciating the handsomeness of my husband's face and lingering in his arms, drawing with Addie).

3) It is surprisingly useful to record my encounters with joy. It was a pain some nights to upload the pictures and write a little something about them, but mostly it was useful to remind myself of the good, joyful things in my life everyday.

So, that's it. What will I take forward? Making time every day for joy. Taking time to notice. Journaling about the good as well as the pressures and fears and worries. And posting about it all here, once in a while.

Thanks for hanging out with me this month.

A Little Too Much Excitement

2011-04-18T07:25:00.000-07:00

E left for Switzerland yesterday for a week-long trip to a medical lab, where he's setting up a laser. We had a busy weekend, so yesterday we were scurrying around a lot trying to get chores and errands done before he left. I needed to go to the grocery store--we were out of coffee, which for me would be like a heroin addict being out of heroin before being tasked to babysit a troop of chimpanzees for a week--so E had the kids for an hour while I ran to do that.

Before I left, E had the kids set up with a "kitchen mixing" activity. The kids like to help with cooking and baking so, sometimes, I'll set out little bowls of ingredients--flour, sugar, salt, water, oil, raisins--and they like to spoon things into their mixing bowls, make messes, spoon them out into muffin tins, etc. E does this activity with them too, but gives them gross ingredients, like ketchup and pickle juice. Or tahini and tikki masala sauce, apparently. Blech.

Long set up. I'm getting there.

I get home from the grocery store. Kitchen mixing is over and E is on his way out the door to the airport, at right around 4pm. The house reeks of curry and oregano, but I don't think much of it. I go in to the studio to check email.

At 4:07, Nolie comes in, whimpering, her shirt still covered in tikki masala and flour. I figure she and Addie are having a tiff and that's why she's crying, but then I look at her.

Her left eye is almost completely swollen shut, with huge, puffy lids on either side getting redder and bigger by the second.

I gasp and call her doctor immediately (for a half second I was proud of myself for having that number memorized). But it's Sunday, and we would have to wait for the on-call nurse to call us back, so I hang up and tell the kids we're going to the hospital NOW.

Why I did not give her Benadryl right then and there, I do not know. I mean, I went into anaphylactic shock myself twice last fall. You'd think I would have that part figured out. I don't know what to say. I panicked, and we headed to the ER. As a result, it would be almost an hour before she got any meds at all.

I must have called E ten times on the way to the hospital--I figured I would need to know what she had played with to get her treated properly. But he wasn't answering. When I finally got a hold of him later he told me about the tikki masala and tahini.

Nolie's other eye began to swell shut on the way to the hospital, and she began sneezing and coughing. Big welts were also breaking out in the creases of her elbows and knees. Addie was giving me the blow-by-blow from the backseat.

Nolie, despite her eyes really hurting and itching, remained remarkably calm. "You probably think I have an allergy, huh, Mom?" she asked, at one point. "My eyes sure are blurry!" And, as we were checking in to the ER, her eyes totally closed, curled in my lap, she noted, "These hospital people sure are nice!"

That kid is something.

Anyway, we finally did get Benadryl and steroids and were able to be home in time for dinner and a bath. Addie was a very kind nurse to her sister, rubbing her back and reading her stories while I made dinner, nursing my shakes and nausea while the adrenaline left my body.

Then we all collapsed into bed and slept deep. Nolie crawled into bed with me at 2:30, and I woke every hour or so to listen for her breathing before nodding back off.

It's moments like this that give you a taste of what it might be like to lose someone you love. I'm probably being over-dramatic here, but I had lots of visions of Nolie's throat closing on the way to the hospital and it being my fault for not calling 911. It took them so long to get her any meds once we got there, and I had visions of her seizing in my arms, not breathing anymore while I screamed at a nurse. All because I didn't keep calm enough to give her some Benadryl right away. And E would have been gone. It would have all happened on my watch.

None of that happened, thank God. We were all kept totally safe and, aside from some residual puffiness, redness, and sniffles today, Nolie is definitely doing better. We're all staying home from school to recover, too, and for that I'm grateful. So, so grateful.

In the meanwhile, we'll be doing some more allergy testing. My guess is a severe skin allergy to paprika--one of the main ingredients in curry, which is in tikki masala. Nolie's only every had one other bad allergic reaction and it was at a dinner party where there was hummus, which often has paprika in it. How random would that be?

Joy 28

2011-04-14T19:15:00.000-07:00

When I put Nolie to sleep at night, she asks me to put a bubble around her, her bubble of love. It's made of out of mommy love, daddy love, Addie love, the love of all the nanas and papas and aunties and uncles and cousins and friends and teachers, and even of all the people who don't know her but love her. It's made of the strongest thing in the world--love--and it can never break, and it keeps her safe and warm and nothing bad can happen while she's in there. It surrounds her all the time, even when she's forgotten about it. She can always call it up just by remembering it's there.

So, for today: I'm grateful for the joy of a million thoughtful blessings. Thanks to all of you for reminding me I'm surrounded in a bubble of love, too. I feel it, I do.

Joy 27

2011-04-13T20:36:00.000-07:00

Morning walk. Church Ranch Ditch.

The sound of rain.
A glass of Wednesday wine.
Another week closer to summer.

Joy 26

2011-04-12T19:51:00.000-07:00

My joy for today is that I'm not going to work anymore tonight, but am instead going to crawl into bed with my husband, a glass of wine, and Jon Stewart.

Well, Jon won't be in bed with us, really. Though I wouldn't mind that.

bahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!

Joy 25

2011-04-12T19:49:00.000-07:00

So, here's something interesting.

I overcommit at work, usually because I feel like I'm needed on certain projects and also need to prove my worth. Then I get stressed trying to get all my work done. So I overwork, thinking if I just get that last little thing done, I will be able to relax. Except, I'm not able to relax, because I've been overworking and have built up that stupid pattern, which is hard to break out of. I feel miserable and lose my sense of self.

Then, I overcommit some more.

Rinse, repeat.

And I wonder why I can't find my joy.

So, my joy for yesterday is in realizing that working more will not help me to relax or feel joyful. Only making time for joy and being myself will help me feel more joyful. But I have to overwork sometimes to remember this. Duh and duh. What can I say. I'm a fool who must relearn the same lesson over and over again throughout my entire freaking life.

Also, I received a very beautiful sweater and some cash for my birthday, and though that may not be the deep kind of joy I think I'm seeking, it was still pretty awesome :).

Joy 24

2011-04-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

A quiet day of catching up on chores and a little bit of work and a lot of hanging out.

We've spent money on swim lessons for the girls, of course, but the single most important thing that has helped them to swim has been E. taking them to the pool, every weekend. Addie used to be afraid of putting her face in the water and wouldn't swim without a floaty. Now she can freestyle, and both girls do this:

Things like this feel like miracles when you've have to fight for such baby steps, and then they take big leaps on their own.

We had a yummy dinner, and then Addie cashed in on her birthday present, which was a shopping spree at the Brass Armadillo antique mall ($25 on mama). She had fun picking everything out, and I had a blast watching her evaluate everything for price, quality, texture, and whatever other ineffables seven-year-olds consider important (cuteness, cuddle-ability, oddity, etc.).

What she bought with her money: A doll for Nolie (the most expensive thing). A book for Nolie. A keychain with different kinds of plastic dollar bills attached. A fake barbie doll set (because there were eight pairs of shoes and a "wine" bottle and glasses and two outfits). A Care Bear. A jacks set.

Another perfect day.

Joy 23

2011-04-10T18:30:00.000-07:00

The perfect re-entry. I was so wiped out from crying over Pru and traveling and trying to hold it together, and E let me sleep in, then brought me coffee. I finally got up and started one of the 20 loads of laundry we had to do this weekend (Pru had fouled a couple of the beds, unfortunately) and then we took Milo for a walk up at Church Ranch ditch. The sun did us all good.

We hung laundry on the line all day, worked in the garden, but not too strenuously, and eventually I succombed to the call of the hammock. E and I looked at each other and said, simultaneously "margaritas."

We put the call out on Facebook, and friends filtered in and out all day. I realized my new favorite word was "togetherness."

So, so glad to be home.

Joy 22

2011-04-09T08:43:00.000-07:00

Home.