The breath is the fire

As an adult I have grown out of most of the once-overt symptoms of my ADHD, just as my teen-years specialist predicted I would. I stopped taking Concerta when we started trying to conceive Nico and very luckily never needed to resume treatment. One thing I still have, something I definitely view as an asset, is an immense capacity for multitasking. At home and especially at work, I can bounce easily from project to project, holding several threads at all times. When I'm at my best it's exhilarating, and I skate along the knife's edge gleefully juggling chainsaws and machetes and live chickens. Even at rest, my brain kind of whirs along. It has always amazed me that I can ask MB as we're going to sleep, "What are you thinking about?" and he can honestly answer, "Nothing." I'm never not thinking about something, or several somethings, and it's always been this way.

I remember once when I was about eight years old, my dad set up our tent in the backyard and we had a practice camp-out. With the excitement of the adventure, I couldn't sleep. I told my dad I didn't know how to fall asleep and he advised me to just lie still and not think about anything. It was a mystifying concept. Not think of anything? I'd never done it. I tried and tried and can still recall one perfect moment of utter blankness, which startled me so much that I immediately started thinking about it. The closest I can usually get to not thinking is to think "Don't think! Stop thinking!" which is about as relaxing as you'd imagine.

Other than when I'm asleep - when I'm usually busy having vivid action-movie-style dreams - my best bet for finding moments of quiet and inner peace is to go to yoga class. I've been practicing yoga off and on since college, and I keep going back to it. Part of it is that my body just seems to really like yoga - I'm strong and flexible in the ways that work for yoga, and I like the calm of it. I did a weekly yoga class during my entire pregnancy with Nico and it was often a challenge to focus and not sit in a pose going over my grocery list or what we still needed to do for the baby's room. I went back for six months or so after Nico was born, but ended up dropping yoga in favor of cardio boot camp in the interest of getting the most bang for my once-a-week gym visit buck.

And then, almost exactly a year ago, a new-ish power yoga studio about three minutes from my house had a week of free classes and I went to one. It was my first real experience with Ashtanga yoga and it was one of those cliche-inspiring big-life-moment things, literally the best yoga class I'd ever been to in my life. I worked my ass off and sweated buckets and my body detoxed so hard that I felt like I had a hangover the next morning (to the point of waking up craving a breakfast egg biscuit and sucking down Advil and water all day). I felt awful and it was awesome. I went back two nights later and did it again. This yoga, it's work. I'm so busy just keeping up and keeping track of what we're doing that I don't think about anything for an hour and fifteen minutes, nothing but the breath and the flow and probably how bad my quads hurt. I love the practice and I love the people just as much. There are a few skinny girls with tiny boobs and pert yoga butts, but there are also girls my age with post-baby bellies and middle-aged men with soft middles. The owner and main instructor is one of the most kind and cheerful people I've met, but never in an annoying way. There's not a lot of chit-chat before class, but there's something great about fighting through some never-ending Warrior series and having the entire class let out a burst of relieved laughter along with you when the instructor finally says, "And…down to high plank."

One of my New Year's resolutions is to make it to Saturday yoga classes as often as possible now that I don't have to work every weekend. I went yesterday for the intermediate / advanced class and had my ass handed to me by a tiny, intense guest instructor. At the beginning she asked us to set an intention for our practice and I picked "peace," hoping I'd be able to let the hamster off the wheel and just be present in the moment. Then I was too busy sweating and trying to keep up with her to think about anything else. The thinking fired up again at the end, as I lay in corpse pose failing to be quietly at rest. And then, as if she could see me thinking, the instructor leaned over and adjusted my shoulders, repositioned my head, massaged my temples, and tapped me lightly in between the eyes with her finger before gliding off to fix someone else. We're all a work in progress, it seems.


Reading:  I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet

Playing:  a mix I made for a friend years ago

Wonderland

We ended up going to the geology club reunion on Saturday, and even though I was having social-anxiety second thoughts off and on the whole way there, it was fine. Better than fine, really. I had finally decided to approach it with the same mentality as I did my 10-year high school reunion: I'd go because if I didn't, I'd always wonder what I missed. Except this time I was left feeling regretful that we didn't opt in for the entire weekend. We'll definitely be doing that next time the reunion is held within driving distance. We were only there for about three hours total and didn't do a lot of mingling, but we did spend about an hour and a half fossil hunting on a road cut.

We didn't find anything spectacular but it was nice to be out under a perfect October sky, chatting with people who really get something I enjoy in the same way I get it. The fossil hunting is so easy there that you can literally just sit for a moment and you'll start seeing all these little bits and pieces lying on the ground in plain sight. I had forgotten the simple pleasure of sitting and waiting for the fossils to reveal themselves, and the first time I tried, there was this perfect tiny little blastoid lying right there at my feet. MB didn't know what it was, but he recognized the marvel of something that once was alive at the bottom of the sea being forever preserved in stone.


We also took Nico to the fall party that we were invited to, and that was almost a disaster but was more or less redeemed by the end. He fell asleep in the car on the way there and then woke up on the wrong side of the couch about half an hour after we arrived. He ended up staggering around crying for at least half an hour, and it was fairly awful. Nothing we tried to cheer him up worked in the least. He hated the glow bracelets that he loved last month on our camping trip. He didn't want a snack, didn't want to hold his flashlight, didn't want to look at trucks in the driveway. We skipped the hayride because I didn't want to ruin it for everyone by dragging my screaming toddler along for the trip. Eventually he acquiesced to a walk around the campfire and that calmed him down. By the end of the party he seemed to be having a good time, so I'm going to count the excursion as at least partially successful. Right before we left I was pointing out some constellations to MB and noticed that Nico was looking up at the stars, too. I don't know if he's ever noticed them before. I didn't take any pictures because by the time he stopped flipping out, it was dark. Believe me when I tell you that he was wearing a very cute hat.


On Sunday I took him to get his 21-month / Halloween photos done, and he had a ball running around in the photographer's backyard, kicking through leaves and running up a grassy incline while announcing "Nico walk uphill!" He's getting so big, you guys. So big. We're so lucky to know a great photographer who likes to take Nico's picture.

After our photo appointment, we picked up MB and went out to lunch. Nico spotted the boom of an excavator sticking up above the tops of the cars in the parking lot and was very keen to point it out to us. On our way out, MB told me to go pull the car around and walked with Nico over to the edge of the vacant lot next to the restaurant so that he could get a better look at the excavator. It was just a small, simple moment, but it was one of those moments where you think maybe we're doing this parenting thing right. We don't get to spend as much time with Nico as we'd like, but maybe the key is to always be willing to take ten minutes out of a busy day to go check out a dump truck.

Reading:  State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

Playing:  the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack

Bang Bang Bang

Decency

I had a package that needed to be mailed today, so Nico and I took care of it on the way to our play date this morning. I figured 10 AM on a Monday was a pretty safe time to go to the post office, but boy was I wrong. When we arrived there was a non-moving line of about a dozen people. We ended up waiting there for at least 15 minutes, creeping slowly through the line. Nico was squirmy so I risked putting him down. He actually did really well, sitting on the floor to play with his trucks and staying with me as the line moved. At one point he started rolling one of the trucks to me and asking me to roll it back. This worked a few times, then he overshot and the truck went several feet past me. A woman about my age in line behind us pushed the car back, and then continued to push it back and forth with Nico for a few minutes. When it rolled past her, she turned to the nicely-dressed older man behind her and said, "I guess it's your turn now!" and then he rolled the car back and forth with Nico once or twice. So many stories on the internet are about people being intolerant toward children in public, so it was a really great surprise to have people in a busy, irritating, long-wait situation be so nice to my kid, just for the sake of being nice.

Regression

Nico seems to be suffering from some sleep regression lately, and though I keep telling myself it's a phase, it's a phase, it's got to be a phase, when he wakes up screaming at 3:30 in the morning, it feels like this is never going to end, oh my hell, send help. He's been a good sleeper for ages, and usually when he does wake up a little Ferber-approved pat on the behind is all he needs to settle himself back down. For a long time, he didn't even need the butt-pats and would soothe himself to sleep within a minute or two of waking up during the night. Now, though, we're into the realm of crying so hard while I'm in the shower that he almost barfs before I get out and hear him and hurry to his rescue. And as we've discussed, anything that involves the potential for barf is not a-okay with me. I guess I'm not really going anywhere with this, just trying to remind myself that it's a phase (it had better be a phase) and on the bright side, at least if I have to go in and rock him back to sleep I get an extra limp-limbed curly-headed warm-baby cuddle.

Rabbit hole

I was singing to Nico after the aforementioned near-barf incident and reflecting that about half the songs I know for lullaby purposes are religious in origin. That got me thinking, and I couldn't seem to stop. I was raised Catholic but don't consider myself Catholic now, or even Christian. I don't have any specific life-changing story or reason, I just don't find church spiritually fulfilling or feel particularly connected to God when I'm there. I do enjoy the tradition of, say, midnight Christmas Mass, but I think that's more for the nostalgia and the memories of Christmases past with my family. MB was raised Christian but as far as I can tell his parents sort of bounced around between various denominations. Some more information that may or may not be relevant: almost no one in our immediate families goes to church, either. We don't pray before meals though grace is said before holiday meals with both extended families. We don't read the Bible or display religious things in the house or say bedtime prayers.

Now that I have a kid, I sometimes wonder if he'll miss out on something if we don't start taking him somewhere for church. I don't for one second believe that he needs church to be a good, moral person, but I wonder if (properly liberal and inclusive) religion would give him another lens through which to view the world as he grows. After all, as a friend pointed out, he'll never get all the Biblical reference in Shakespeare if he never reads the Bible. On the other hand, I went to a K-8 Catholic school, and I didn't get most of the Biblical references in Shakespeare, either. I still got an A in the class. I will admit another fear that I have: I'm afraid if we don't take him to church, he'll fall under the thrall of one of those creepy culty teen-proselytizing megachurches when he's a teenager. (It's not an entirely ungrounded fear; it happened to one of my cousins in high school, though she seems mostly normal now.) I suppose I'm risking preachy comments in order to ask if any of you out there are like us -- God-believing but not big God-in-the-home folks who don't take their kids to church -- and how you feel about the whole church / no church issue. I'm curious, is all.



Reading:  The Mermaid Garden by Santa Montefiore

Playing:  Lovestrong by Christina Perri

Perspective

Since my formerly full time job (Job A) was cut to part time in January, things have been getting worse over there. I don't want to get into specifics since writing about work at all makes me nervous, but basically almost all the positive things I once could enjoy about working there have been stripped away one by one. Some of it is so stupid and so petty and so unbelievably micromanager-y that I wish I could lay it out for you just to get some validation that it's fucking ridiculous, but...well, right now I still need this job. Meanwhile, luckily, the second part-time job I was fortunate to get at another organization that I really like (Job B) has been going very well. I've been wishing for several months that I could just go over to Job B full time and simplify my life. Keeping two jobs straight is a lot more tiring than I expected, especially since having only one job has been a fairly recent development for me. I can't figure out how I am working less hours for less pay but have fewer days off and feel more exhausted at the end of the week.

Today two things happened that nearly pushed me over the edge. I actually got really angry, and that's not like me. I'm pretty even-keeled and I usually keep my mouth shut even when I do get irritated. But oh, I have been pushed to my limit already and today was too much. I should probably feel bad that I kind of unloaded on my supervisor since the initial job cut was not in any way his fault, but I don't. It started when I asked if there was any chance of getting one full weekend off in May and getting shot down. That wasn't that big of a surprise, though I told him straight up that working six days a week (I often only have Monday off) sucks. I could've sulked about that for a while and got over it, but then he said exactly the wrong thing. He tried to express sympathy by saying it was too bad I had to work weekends at my other job, but pointed out that he couldn't really do anything about that and that Job A is my "real job, anyway."

I told him -- pretty calmly, under the circumstances -- that it isn't correct or fair to say that Job A is my "real job" when ( 1 ) I work just as many hours at Job B, ( 2 ) It's Job B that allows me to continue to afford my mortgage, and ( 3 ) Job B was there for me when Job A totally failed me (i.e. utterly screwed me over after six damn years). God, the whole conversation still pisses me off, like twelve hours later.

Then not too long after that, it was basically laid out that the goal of the organization is to transition my job -- once I am (allegedly) restored to full-time status -- away from the type of work I am focused on now, the very last aspect of this job that I am able to enjoy. Away from the work I have built my career around. Away from the work that compelled me to take this job instead of going to graduate school back in the day. Away from the work that I am damn good at, that I love, that has honestly come to define me. And that was it, I knew. My heart is done with this. What was once a career and a passion has sadly become just a job. (And of course, really, yes, I'm lucky to have any job, let alone a job I can still derive some joy from when I'm not being pummeled by the day-to-day erosion of something that once made me so happy I could almost cry thinking about what it's become.)

After this all went down and I went on with my day, trying to just buckle down and do all the stuff I had to do even though I just wanted to be anywhere else, I kept thinking about an email my good friend Rachel sent me a few weeks back. She told me about her own struggle with a shit job in a shit economy after she finished law school and how she eventually came to realize that her job was just a paycheck, that everything else in her life was the real point, the real purpose. That if having a shit job was the worst that happened, she was going to be okay. Until it gets better, she advised, "The job is just a paycheck and whatever small joys you can squeeze out of it until you get home to what really matters to you." I told her after she sent it that I needed to make that my mantra, and it came back to me today.

I worked the rest of day and rushed off to pick Nico up and cart him to his weekly swimming lesson at the Y. He hadn't napped well today and was crabby. He groused in the backseat on the drive over and then flailed and complained in the locker hall outside the pool. I was pretty sure we were going to have to leave class for the first time due to a meltdown. But that's not what happened. Instead, we had one of the best lessons we've ever had. He let me float him on his back for the first time. He flirted with the lifeguards, kicked his legs, paddled with his arms, was a trooper every time I dipped his head under. Since it was the last class of this session, they turned on the splash park at the end. I thought it might scare him when the jets started up and the big bucket array started dumping water, but he loved it. We walked down to the shallow end and he spent fifteen minutes holding tightly to my hands and toddling through fountains as high as his head. He walked through them again and again, put his toes over the jets, stood in the spray.

I looked down at his fiery hair, at his thin toddler shoulders, at his tiny shark swimming trunks, his little bare feet. I looked at the water bubbling up, at his funny little Frankenstein walk, at his utter captivation. And I honestly didn't think about anything else. I did wish I had a camera so that I could record this unexpectedly transcendent moment, even though a photo wouldn't have really done it justice. I wanted to share this heartswelling thing with everyone, I wanted MB to be there to see it, I wanted to show the whole world this beautiful boy of mine, this beautiful little soul I'm somehow lucky enough to be entrusted with.

After they shut off the splash park, after we took a warm shower and I dressed him in his firetruck pajamas and carried him out to the car, we drove home beneath the most beautiful sunset I've seen in a long time and I felt content. Nothing about this morning had changed, but it didn't really seem to matter so much anymore. I remember now what really matters.

Five

For my eighth birthday, a friend gave me a fill-in-the-blank Ramona diary, and that was the beginning. Once I filled it up, I spent some allowance money on a proper blank diary, and then another, and another. I kept a diary until I graduated from college 15 years later, sometimes writing almost daily, sometimes going for weeks between entries. I wrote about major events and boring day-to-day occurrences, about crushes and enemies, vacations and the family pets. By the time I finished college, I was spending less time writing in my journals and more time thinking about how I wanted to be a Serious Fiction Writer. But then I got married. I couldn't find a full time job, so I got two part-time jobs instead which often added up to more than 40 hours a week. I spent a lot of time reading but barely any time writing, and I started to miss it terribly. Then our landlord decided to wire our apartment building for cable and roll it into the rent, and it became feasible to get a cable / internet package at home for the first time. And not too long after that, I discovered blogs. After a year or so of reading, I decided I wanted to start my own.

When I set up my own site, I definitely had delusions of grandeur. I never really believed that I'd hit the big time, but I think I always secretly hoped I would. Unfortunately I jumped on the blog bandwagon a little too late and I just wasn't very good at it back then. I was out of practice and my early entries were infrequent and stilted. But blogging has been good to me. I have made friends, read stories that lifted me up and others that made me cry. I've been educated, I've laughed until I had tears running down my face. I've celebrated births and mourned passings and discovered a new kind of community. The (neglected of late) Photo Friday project inspired me to keep taking pictures. It took a while, but I eventually found my voice again.

I don't really know where I expected to be five years after I posted a painfully un-ironic picture of my cat and called it my first official blog entry. On this blog's five-year anniversary, I find that I'm pretty content in my little space. I no longer check my stats twice a day (or even once a month) or feel terrible when a post doesn't get many (or any) comments. A big thanks to anyone who reads and anyone who does comment, because even though I write for myself, it helps to have an invisible audience as well. I'll never be famous or land a book deal or even be picked to host a Wii party (sob!), but I'll always be grateful for the friends I've met and that blogging reminded me how to be a writer.

Nesting or temporary insanity, it's so hard to differentiate

Holy crap, y'all, what a day. MB and I slept late, but we made up for it big time by the end. We got up around 10:30 and finished painting the brachiopod's room, then took showers and met rabidmonkey and norahs1213 for lunch. After that, we did our grocery shopping for the week. MB decided to fix the janky dryer exhaust hose that constantly detaches itself from the vent, so he went to Lowe's for parts. While he was gone, I ended up reorganizing the breakfast nook (which is basically our mudroom / storage area) so that we can bring up a cabinet from the basement for more pantry space. This entailed moving shelves, consolidating bins of stuff, and carrying crap out to the shed and the trash bin. Indy was somewhat worried about all this activity, since his crate is in the breakfast nook, which basically makes it his room. I think he's pretty happy with the results, though he could've just been excited about that ancient goldfish cracker he found behind the trash can. It's so hard to tell with dogs.

I ended up cleaning out and reorganizing the actual pantry, too, before MB got home. Then he and I spent at least an hour hooking up the new dryer hose to the dryer and vent. That goddamn hose has got to be the most poorly designed piece of equipment I have ever, ever seen. Getting it attached to the dryer with the grippy ring thingy required an angle of hand and screwdriver that was basically physically impossible. Then the stupid hose ripped no less than FOUR TIMES while we were trying to attach it and expand it. It's a miracle we didn't light the whole thing on fire and walk away, to be honest. I swear, at one point it was giving me contractions. Too bad they went away, I guess. When that was finally, finally done, we ate dinner and started to relax, but then I decided to try to get a little bit more work done in the baby's room.

MB and BoMB helped move the furniture in, and then I brought the bpod's books and toys and other gear over from the guest room and put everything in its place. If this is nesting, I'm going to be very glad it's done when he's born very soon. If it's not, well...I guess I'll still be glad, but I'll also be really tired tomorrow. I should probably wait until I have better pictures, since these turned out sort of overexposed and crappy, but I'm too exhausted to go back upstairs and take more. My mom is making curtains for the windows, we need new outlet covers, and I've got to have my dad bring over the glider chair mom is passing on to us, but other than that it's basically done:

Diapers will eventually go on the middle shelf of the changing table, but
the shelf is loose and needs to be glued or braced before it will bear weight.


It was kind of an accident that he ended up with so many stuffed animals.
I found this cool folding puppet theater at Goodwill last week for five bucks!

I'll have to get a better shot of the thing under the window.
It's a doll crib that was mine when I was little, now full of puppets.
Here's the crib, which is set up in our room.
My two boys, soon to be three. I'm simultaneously impatient to meet our baby and yet terrified that I'm not ready to be his mother, which I suppose is normal. I feel pulled in two directions now, part of me wanting to get on with things already and part of me wanting to wait just a bit longer, just a few days more. But if there's one thing this pregnancy has taught me, it's that things are well out of my hands now. All I can do is my best, and then hope it's enough. I suppose that's all we ever do, really.

Grace in small things

I don't feel like I have the dedication for a full-on commitment to Schmutzie's wonderful Grace in Small Things project, but here are some small things that made my life better today:

1. yoga class, which kicked righteous ass

2. Flogging Molly playing loud with the windows rolled down

3. Gala apples

4. these videos, brought to my attention by the lovely Loralee

5. bloggy friends, new and old

Heavy

After puberty, I was never skinny. I always had thick thighs, heavy calves, big boobs. I never had six-pack abs, even at my thinnest. But I was healthy, I was lean, I was strong. In those days, I was in Taekwondo classes, working out one or two straight hours, two days a week. And by the time I was in high school, I would work out hard, until I was sweaty, achy, exhilarated. There was joy in the strength of my limbs, in the way I could move, in how I could push through limits and keep going. And I didn't realize it at the time, but my God I had sexy arms.

In the almost ten years since I quit Taekwondo, I have to admit to a slow decline. Without organized classes, without the accountability of classmates, I don't do much. Once I got out of college, I no longer had to walk around campus every day, so that was a passive workout gone as well. I suppose I should thank my lucky stars I'm not worse off than I am, seeing as I've spent a decade mooching around and failing to resist chocolate.

I am trying to find the balance, now. I don't like the number on the scale, don't like how my stomach looks, don't like wearing a size 34Frightful bra (HATE.) But I still love my body for what it can do. I'm not lean, but I'm still strong enough. Learning how to push limits so long ago has served me well, and I can still bend and twist into impractical shapes at yoga class without too much trouble. I have a fat poochy tummy, but underneath there's enough strength to make it through a Pilates asskicking without quite falling over dead.

Lately I have been really frustrated. I walk the dog almost a mile and a half most weekday mornings, usually in 30 minutes or so. I make conscious efforts to eat better and healthier foods. After years of clinging loyally to 2% milk, I have switched to 1%. And yet, the numbers on the scale keep creeping up, the waistbands on my jeans keep getting tighter. WTF, body? What do you want from me? More than I'm giving it, apparently. Or less, in the case of dinner. Or maybe, just maybe, it just wants me to learn to respect it for what it is, what it can accomplish, rather that what it looks like. Perhaps it simply wants the same treatment I demand for myself from the world.

I'm working on it. I will try to remember to keep working on it.

Reading:  The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett

Playing:  streaming U2's new album, No Line on the Horizon

Om mani padme humdrum

I probably should not admit this on a public blog that my husband reads (hi, honey!), but I find certain forms of housework to be rather relaxing. Some chores I merely enjoy in a sort of grim, abstract way. For instance, I enjoy sweeping the floor in that it feels nice to have a clean floor when I'm done, but not in the sense that I actually like sweeping the floor. However, there are other chores that I find truly meditative.

I always focus best when I'm doing two things at once, which I suspect can be blamed on my ADHD. For instance, when I was in high school, I usually did my homework in my room with the TV on, and in college if I was studying the stereo was playing. I don't know how to say it in any kind of medical or scientific way, but it feels to me like the ADHD part of my brain can focus on the distraction, leaving the rest of my brain to get on with things. If I don't have a distraction, the ADHD part is roaming around, listening for one, which means I get distracted by everything, including the absence of things. Yes, I can get distracted by it being too quiet.

Anywho, the chores I enjoy the most are the ones that are easy and repetitive. While one part of my brain is sorting socks or drying spoons or washing plates, the rest is free to roam. I have written blog entries, composed emails and to-do lists, come up with things to say in difficult conversations, and pondered the state of the world while up to my elbows in clean laundry or dirty dishes. Back in the days when fiction seemed to come as easy as breath, I wrote entire passages while standing in my parents' basement, folding clothes. I'd run snips of dialogue and prose through my head, tweaking and refining, and then I'd go straight back to my room and write it all down. My very favorite pair of opening and closing lines used in a short story were born this way. I distinctly remember standing in front of the dryer and hearing them in my head clear as a bell.

I don't compose fiction as easily as breathing anymore, sad to say, but I still find laundry folding and dish washing to be a contemplative, peaceful time, so the two hours or so I spent conquering the dirty dishes this evening (usually MB's job) were rather relaxing. Of course, that doesn't mean I want to do it all the time (hi, honey!), and let's reiterate that I don't find all household tasks delightful. I have never once had a profound thought while cleaning the bathroom or scooping cat poo, just for the record.


Reading:  Terrier by Tamora Pierce

Playing:  Jagged Little Pill by Alanis Morissette

There but for the grace of God go I

I am not still very often. Even when I am physically sitting in one place, my mind is whirring away. It astounds me that I can ask MB "What are you thinking about?" and he can honestly answer, "Nothing." I'm never, ever not thinking about something, and I'm usually thinking about several things at once. In a way, I think this contributes to me being a generally happy-go-lucky person. I'm usually too busy bouncing from one idea to the next, from projects to tasks to daydreams, that I just don't have time to worry about what-ifs. Lately, though, things have been catching up.

This economy scares the shit out of me. We do just this side of all right most months, but definitely could not survive on either income alone. I've been told not to expect a cost-of-living adjustment this year, and I don't make that much to begin with. Of course, I am not going to complain too much, because everyone at my boss's wife's company had to take a 5% pay cut just last week. MB's company supports the auto industry, so you can guess how comfortable that feels at times like these, when automakers are making unhappy headlines seemingly every day. Just yesterday, a friend of mine who is pregnant and in school found out that her husband is getting laid off from his tech job.

While we're here, let's talk about the pregnancy thing. In early December, I had six pregnant friends. Six! The future was full of hope and fat, happy babies. As of last week, I had three pregnant friends, and not one of the other three pregnancies had produced a baby, fat or otherwise. Three respectably healthy girls, my age, with what had appeared to be normal pregnancies, and then all those hopes, just gone. And while I know that it must just be an ugly coincidence, I have started to stare worriedly at my remaining pregnant friends. I send bursts of thought at their babies, sternly admonishing them to stay put (for all the good it did the last three times). It's very sad and very scary and very unsettling.

And while I know that probably we'll be okay, that really all we need is each other, that if we were (please let's not) to lose everything but each other, we'd somehow someday come out the other side, the still moments are starting to be less comforting. Sometimes when the quiet minutes sneak up on me -- while I'm driving, in between the morning bustle of walk, shower, pack lunch, crate dog, find bag, locate keys and the day at work -- or lying in bed in the dark, MB already asleep beside me -- sometimes then I can't stop thinking. I start to worry about jobs. About this house we just bought. About the baby we want to have. About my dad, less than a year from retirement, holding his breath that nothing gets screwed up. About friends' suddenly and seriously ill spouses, siblings, parents, grandparents -- only a few, but a few is too many. About my friends, their jobs, their families, their babies.

In the sunlight, it's easy to flit from one thing to another, forgetting about all the seriousness that's going around. If I avoid the dire headlines and focus on what I'm doing, I can forget how narrow the ledge is that we're all walking these days. But in the quiet times, I sometimes feel like I'm staring down something that's staring right back, reminding me that it's all so goddamn precarious.

Buncha tree hugging hippie crap

One of the many small and random tasks I have at work is to collect weather data every day to send in to NOAA. Although I don't really enjoy going out to get the info on days when it's pouring, or icy, or broiling hot, I definitely have noticed that I'm more aware of the seasons now. Keeping our garden this summer has added to that sense of being tuned in to what's outside. Before I started our garden, J-Dog and I were google chatting one night, and she said, "Getting food out of dirt is AWESOME." She was totally right. Some days, the food feels like a bonus, and I could almost forget that I didn't start the garden just so I'd have an excuse to go outside and listen to the cicadas humming and the birds settling in to roost, to watch for lightning bugs and butterflies.

I read Dean Koontz's latest, Odd Hours, a few weeks back, and there was a line of Odd's that stuck with me:  "Because knowing the names of things is a way to pay respect to the beauty of the world, I know the names of many trees." For a long time, I've felt like learning about the world around me helps me to appreciate its beauty and experience a deeper sense of connection to it. I've learned the name of trees, like Odd. I've learned the names of flowers and bugs and birds and rocks, and anywhere I go, when I see something that I know the name of, that place feels a little bit like home. It works the other way, too. When I can identify the trees on my morning walk with the dog, or know the name of the bird that's singing in the tree outside work, or see the familiar shapes of constellations in the sky over our yard, it makes it easy to remember that we are never more than a small part of a large, amazing world. Rather than making me feel insignificant and alone, this tends to make me feel connected and watched over. Hokey? Probably. But I wouldn't have it any other way.



Reading:  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Playing:  the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack

Foundations

When my parents got married, they bought a little house. When they were ready to start a family, they sold their little house to my mom's brother and his new wife and bought a bigger house two blocks away. In 1979, my cousin Amethyst was born. Almost exactly one year later, my cousin Anthony was born. A year and three months later, my cousin MacGyver was born. And then, ten months later I was born. And thus, there were four little children living within two blocks of each other, with two twenty-something stay-at-home-moms. My cousins and I spent most of our childhoods together. They were my surrogate siblings, my constant playmates. During the summers, Amethyst and I had sleepovers at one house or the other nearly every weekend. We'd spend the night in the yard barn clubhouse my parents built for me and my sister, or in the loft in the giant garage her dad built behind their house. We rode our bikes down to the neighborhood supermarket and blew our allowances on gum and Funyuns.

In March of my freshman year in college, Amethyst had her first kid, a girl (Custard). In the years since, all four of us "big kids" got married. The "little kids," our younger sisters--cousin Brie, born in 1984, and my sister and cousin Sunny, born in 1986--have dated and dismissed various boys, graduated high school, started college. Amethyst married her baby daddy, had another daughter (Pie), and last year got divorced. Anthony has two little girls with his wife. MacGyver married Danger, of course. Younger cousin Brie has a little son. Tonight I went over to my aunt and uncle's house--to my parents' first house--to have birthday cake and celebrate Custard's eighth birthday. Eight years, my God. Can it have been so long?

My parents still live in their second house, two blocks away from my aunt and uncle. All of us kids went to the same high school, two blocks in the other direction from my parents' house. Even now, our lives draw us back to these places, to these memories, to the solid foundation that our parents built for us, before we were even born.


Reading:  The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

Playing:  Comfort Eagle by Cake (sound warning)

Golden

During my junior and senior years in high school, I spent nearly every Friday and Saturday night going out to see local bands play. There were three or four that we'd see just about anywhere they played, even a three-stoplight town in BFE called Bridgeport, Illinois that was more than an hour away from home. This was long before MySpace, so shows were advertised by word of mouth and with fliers. Even though I took piano lessons from age 7 on, I think my bone-deep love of music really got started at those shows.

By the time my freshman year in college was underway, all of the main bands had split up. We went to a few shows here and there, but it never was the same. That perfect confluence of music, company, and atmosphere was gone, and we knew even then that we'd never really find it again. I have mourned it at times, even though I've never been one to moon over the good old days or to live life as if high school was the apex of my social existence.

I ran into the guitarist from one of those bands tonight at Starbucks, where he took my order and then squinted at my face and said, "Do I know you from somewhere?" I told him the name of his old band, and that I used to go to all the shows. We chatted about people from the old days. His drummer moved to Nashville three years ago. The bass player toured with a nationally-known band as a merchandiser. The manager now runs his own marketing firm. The singer married the lead singer of another local band, had a baby, and moved to one of the Carolinas. We talked about how we just can't go to shows anymore. We're too old, the kids are too young, and the music just isn't that good.

Driving home, it hit me how horrified the girl I was would be if she saw the grown-ass woman I am now. My uniform is jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts instead of skater pants, tank tops, and little bitty tees. I work 40 hours a week on salary, spend a lot of time behind a desk, and claim chai lattes and chocolate as vices instead of clove cigarettes and late, late nights. I'm a walking cliché with my SUV, big house, marriage, and aspirations of having two happy, well-adjusted kids. What would she see, if she met me now? A sellout, maybe. A conformist. But I see her, and I know she's a part of me, and she always will be. I can still listen to music through her ears, feel the love of it in the marrow of my bones. Those days of shows and knowing all the bands and being part of a scene were golden, but so is this, here, today.

My stupid little life

Today's cluster of events went off without a hitch. It was a very good day, just by not being a bad day. After I got finished with work, MB and I went to eat Chinese New Year dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. He ate there last night, with BoMB and R, so all the waiters and the owner kept teasing us about being back so soon. "Last night was boys' night," the owner's wife said. "Tonight is honeys' night." We ate corn soup and Szechwan dumplings, green beans wrapped in tortilla-like pancakes and spicy chicken. We drank hot jasmine tea and finished dinner by toasting with tiny glasses of plum wine that turned my cheeks bright pink and made me feel self-conscious. After dinner, we went to pick out a fridge for our new house, and popped in at the craft store so I could buy beads for a project.

When we got home, we lazed around on the couch while he drank wine and watched movies on TV and I ate Phish Food and read blog entries. Now, I'm in bed with my laptop, listening to a Decemberists CD and doing bloggy things. MB is on one side of me and Kitters is on the other, and they're both snoring, just a little. My left elbow is digging into MB's back a bit, and the cat's bony foot is digging into my right elbow a bit. We are an odd little parenthetical, a strange but mostly happy little family of snorers and navel-gazers. I know that no one cares what I had for lunch, but I feel like it's a good idea to remind myself every once in a while that my life? It rocks. Even when it's sort of boring, it's also pretty rad.

It's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much; my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it. And then it flows through me like rain, and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life. (American Beauty)

A life more ordinary

Last week, Linda of All & Sundry and Purple is a Fruit posted this quote:  "There are random moments . . . when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead. [...] It's not always visible, but it's what holds everything together." I've had the post open in my browser since Wednesday, going back to read the post and nod emphatically every now and then.

Tonight, Sunday night, I am practicing this religion of small, arbitrary moments of painful happiness. Nothing exceptional is happening. I am watching the Discovery Channel and cheerfully screwing up a sample Christmas ornament. The cat is sleeping in an endearing, rumpled heap by the heat vent. MB is researching Labrador retrievers and Lab rescues, and we are talking a bit about the dog we hope to adopt when we buy a house. We were never dog people, always swore we'd stick to cats, but then my parents adopted a puppy and MB had a change of heart. We've picked a name, maybe. MB stumbled upon it at dinner the other night and I'm hoping it sticks. The dryer is humming out a tuneless drone of mundane and comforting domesticity. Tomorrow, a day off earned by working extra hours on a big and now-complete work project, stretches out before me, full of promise.

In years past, I'm fairly sure I dreaded the thought of an ordinary life, scoffed at the idea of the cliche dog and picket fence and 2.5 kids. Now, I recognize a quiet, happy life for the blessing it is, and I am so very thankful. And breathlessly joyful.




Reading:  The Grey King by Susan Cooper

Om Mani Padme Hung

Yesterday, Evilducky, Danger, MacGyver, and I drove to Bloomington, Indiana, to hear the Dalai Lama speak. It was a really incredible experience, and I'm so glad that we went.

It feels sort of weird to say this about a world-renowned and much-respected spiritual leader, but the Dalai Lama is ADORABLE. Instead of standing at a podium, he sat in a large cushy armchair draped with yellow cloth. The first thing he did when he sat down was say, "First, I will get comfortable." He took off his shoes, sat cross-legged in the chair, and pulled a little red visor out of his pocket to wear to shield his eyes from the lights. He said, "Ah, now I can see your faces! It's almost like you're looking down from heaven!" Then he looked at the people up in the balcony seats and said, "If you fell from heaven, that would be disastrous!"

His speech focused on the need for compassion in life. I've never studied Buddhist teachings or read much about them, so it was really encouraging and uplifting to hear the Dalai Lama advocate living the way I've been trying to live for years--treating others with compassion, even the ones that don't treat you that way; giving affection and love; embracing warm-heartedness; working to let go of negative emotions like anger and jealousy.

He spoke about how letting go of destructive emotions can take the form of an inner disarmament, which can then lead to outer disarmament and an end to violence and warfare. He expressed his view that the world is getting better, and that we shouldn't generalize that the world is a sad and violent place, because the majority of people are not committing acts of violence. He discussed the two levels of compassion--feeling compassion for people we care about, which is easy and comes naturally, and is based in part on a biological response; and feeling compassion for people that we don't know or even who have hurt us, and how we can feel compassion for someone as a fellow human being and yet take a stand against that person's unjust actions.

He expressed his belief that a religious upbringing is not a prerequisite for living a moral life, and pointed out that from infancy we learn affection and compassion by receiving it from our parents. He talked about how even pets can express love and affection, and said that in Tibet, people often say that when a cat is purring on your lap, it's saying its om mani padme hung mantra.

I'm sure I'm forgetting many, many things that he said which resonated with me. I'm so grateful that I got the chance to hear him speak, and I'm definitely going to try to remember to be compassionate and warm-hearted in my day-to-day life.

Once

The tagline for the film Once is "How often do you find the right person?"

I saw the movie with the bibliophile tonight, and while it wasn't the best movie ever, it was very good. I'm a complete sucker for movies about the love of music. Not musicals, per se, but movies about musical people. I often wish I was more musical than I am. I started piano lessons when I was seven, and while I got very good at playing beautiful pieces from my books, I've never been able to create music of my own or follow along well enough to jam with someone else. Of everything music-related, I think that's what I'd most like to do, given the choice of one musical miracle. (I used to say I'd love to be the lead singer of a touring rock band, but I think just being able to do sessions would be good enough).

Oddly, I did get to experience one magical summer of being in a musical sort of environment / synergy. I was friends with a girl who wanted to be a singer-songwriter, and the summer after our freshman year at college, she and another girl we'd gone to high school with recorded a CD together in a mutual friend's bedroom. I don't remember exactly how this happened, but I ended up singing backup vocals on one track of the CD, even though I'm really not a very good singer. I got out the CD for the first time in years after returning from the theater tonight, just because it had been a long time since I'd listened to it, and I was hoping it would take me back to the way it felt to be so young and earnest and willing to put belief in music.

Then, the music started to remind me of just how weird and fortuitous that part of my life really was, and how fitting it is to remember all of this in conjunction with a movie that asks "How often do you find the right person? Once." I was just going to write about how cute the movie was, but then things started to get sort of tangential.

The singer-songwriter, H, went on a roadtrip with me and my cousin MacGyver (Danger's husband) during the summer of 2000. There's really nothing like two weeks in the back of a Suburban, traveling across twelve states, to spark something special, if sometimes short-lived. When we got back home, H and I continued to hang out. There are two main universities in my hometown. I went to Public University, and H went to Private University. She started inviting me to parties with her large and varied group of college friends, and it was really an incredible summer. These were the kind of parties I always wanted to go to, the kind I hope to someday go to again--people talking about anything and everything, where enthusing about your favorite author and passing books around were just as welcome as people sharing beers from the fridge. It wasn't fated for me to stay close to any of those people, really, and I only really know where one couple is these days. Transients through my life, save one. One, the only one, the right one.

One of H's college friends, D, worked at the local ToysRUs. When MB moved up here from Kentucky, he got a job at TRU. He didn't know anyone, so D invited him to hang out with her friends. H's friends.

H and the other singer chick, M, used to play their songs at this short-lived vegetarian cafe downtown on Mondays. I always had to work on Mondays. Except then one Monday, August 7th, I didn't. Danger and I met up and went to the cafe to see H and M play. I remember that I was wearing army-green pants and a polo shirt I'd bought at the Goodwill. I remember that it was drizzling, but I didn't have an umbrella. I remember how nervous I was that I'd agreed to sing backup vocals on that one song at the cafe. In front of people.

I remember sitting at the table, talking to these amazingly cool people who were, however briefly, my friends. I remember hearing one of them say, "Oh, there's MB and his brother," and me thinking that at last I'd get to meet MB, the only unknown member of this oddball consortium of people. I turned around and saw him, and I won't say it was love at first sight, but I can swear to you that I thought, "Huh. Well. Hey." or something. I was interested. Suddenly, intensely, inexplicably interested. I tried very hard to make conversation with him. I was bizarrely relieved when I found out he wasn't returning to Kentucky once the summer ended. I left the cafe knowing that I wanted to see him again.

After that, I semi-stalked him at every party we were at together. I always made an effort to be friendly, and always tracked him down to talk to him. There's a lot more to it, but it comes down to this:  after that, there was nothing else, no one else. That was seven years ago, and there never has been anyone, anything else.

Halfway through the film, I started to think about how blessedly ridiculously blindly damn lucky I am to have found MB, and now that I've recalled all the magic of that summer, it seems like the universe really did line up, just briefly, just for a heartbeat, just for one slow summer, just long enough to give me a chance to meet that right person. And once was all it took.

To see myself through someone else's eyes

I'm gonna get all introspective and talkity here, so come back tomorrow if you're just in it for the goofy cat pictures and animal videos. ;)


At the end of the work day today, I was pondering what clothes to pack for this weekend's trip to Chicago. I started thinking about how few cute little T-shirts I have to wear these days, since I've put on 30 pounds and 3 cup sizes since I bought most of the ones I own back in college. By the time I got home, I was feeling pretty low. Even though I know it's absurd, I seem to be having a lot of "fat days" lately. I don't know if I can blame "society" or "the patriarchy" or if feeling fat is just a biological fact for women.

My mom never obsessed over her weight or dieted while I was growing up. I was never pressured to look any different than I did. I spent most of puberty in Tae Kwon Do, slowly learning to love and respect my body for what it could do rather than for how it looked. It probably didn't hurt that I was naturally thin-ish as a teenager (other than my boobs and thighs), though I never had washboard abs even at my fittest. I was thrilled to get hips and a bit of a ghetto booty at 19. I quit TKD during my sophomore year at college, when school started to require more of my time. Since then, it's been a slow and steady crawl to where I am now, comfortable and content and confident in all ways but one--how I look.

It's absolutely fucking absurd, too. I don't wear makeup. I wear my hair up every day, never fancy. I don't own a brush. I don't own a hairdryer. I wouldn't know what to do with a straightening iron or a compact. I'm not a slob, but I also don't put much stock in valuing appearance over substance. It's just not me. I hate that girls and young women are pressured to look a certain way, or to be a certain weight. When I teach girls at work, I encourage them to love themselves for who they are, and not what "society" may be telling them they should look like / be like / act like. When I'm there, I own my body, I love my figure, and I am proud to look this way.

But in quiet moments by myself, or when I'm brushing my teeth in front of the mirror in my underwear, or when I realize I could pass for a few months' pregnant if I wore the wrong thing, or when I find out that yet another article of clothing no longer fits, well...I'm not so proud or strong or up with me then. I hear women all the time crusading to get back into an 8 or a 6. I don't even know what that means. I still buy pants in the juniors' section, in sizes ranging from 13 to 17, depending on the brand. Sizes in women's clothing pretty much mean nothing when there's this much variation from brand to brand, and yet I still fret over it. I know it's all bullshit, but I still can't shake the feeling that I'm getting a little too big for my britches (literally).

Tonight, I decided to test out a shirt I was pretty sure I couldn't pull off. I figured if I could wear it out on errands, then I'd know it was safe to pack a few little T-shirts for my trip. Once I put it on, I suddenly felt better. The smaller shirt made me look smaller than I felt, not bigger. Curvy instead of lumpy. Hmmm...maybe a hell yeah was in order?

On my way to the library I got double-taked once and whistled at once. Disgusting? Probably, but I didn't feel frumpy and invisible. I started to wonder if maybe I am closer to the curvy, slightly chubby sexpot girls I admire than I thought. I really dig chicks that rock a natural, healthy figure and make it look awesome. I want to be those girls. Maybe my head is the only thing that's holding me back. I started to think that I really just need to consciously start refusing to buy into my own bullshit. I know I'm not model material or super hot stuff, but it's time to stop feeling down about shit that really doesn't matter, right?

By the time I left the library, I was feeling a lot better. Then, at the door, I ran into one of the girls from my volunteer program at work. And dudes, I almost can't write this out because it feels absolutely ridiculous to admit it to anyone (including myself), but this kid looks up to me. I barely feel like I'm old enough to be trusted with a houseplant, and I'm a freakin' role model to these brainy, ballsy 13- and 14-year-old girls, whether I like it or not, girls who are right at the age when it's the hardest to not look like a magazine model. So I chatted with this kid and her mom, and the kid was just grinning like she was so happy to see me, the way I used to grin when I ran into older people I knew who were nice enough to acknowledge me. I was a HUGE dork growing up. HUGELY unpopular. To even know teenagers who are happy to see me in public has been a bit of an adjustment, let me tell you.

So I thought about all of this for the rest of the night, and I don't really know where it's led me, but I think it's important for me to realize that when other people look at me, they don't necessarily see the barely-concealed muffin top or the carefully veiled backfat (Oh God the backfat. How I hate it.) They don't look at my stomach and think, my God, she's letting herself go. They may look at me and think, "My God, she never shuts up, EVER" (or even "My God, her tits are huge" because they sort of are, embarrassingly enough), but they're probably not thinking that I need to call Jenny Craig. If I lose ten pounds tomorrow and carry myself like I'm ashamed of myself, I'm going to look worse than if I gain ten pounds tomorrow and carry myself like I'm proud to be me.

I know, I know...none of this is fucking rocket science, right?

But I think it's high time I reminded myself of all of this. What do I see when I look at myself? What would I see if I could look at myself through someone else's eyes?


And, to close:  before anybody gets all up in arms because I'm "too skinny" to feel this way or whatever, save it. I have almost written entries just like this many times, only to delete them out of concern that people would get their panties in a twist over a so-called skinny bitch talking about having fat days. But you know what? It's my damn blog. If you don't like what I'm saying, don't read it. Girls with small boobs often want bigger boobs, and girls with big bazoombas often long for perky B-cups (trust me on this). Girls without curves wish for them, while hourglass girls feel like wide loads. There is something about women that makes us find fault with our bodies, and it makes me furious and curious all at once. It's not a fat chick problem or a skinny bitch problem--it's apparently a female problem.

If anybody's still reading, thanks for letting me blather on. I'm not really sure what I was intending with this post, but it feels really good to have it all out here instead of rolling around in my brain. Maybe one day we will all know how to love ourselves, as we are, and not as we think we should be.

Learning Curve

At 11:15, I sat down to work on a new fiction piece I've been neglecting. By 12:45, I had put away the clean dishes, sliced the fresh fruit that I'd been ignoring all week, sorted and started the laundry, fed the cat, and cleaned out the cereal cabinet. The only thing I didn't do was add any new words to the story.

Then it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't taken my pills this morning. I've been taking some form of Ritalin or another since age 12 for my ADHD. Fourteen years seems like long enough for me to question my medication status first, instead of last, on days when my concentration is absolute shit. Ha! Think again, ADD girl!

Semi-Domesticated

Since I work three weekends a month, I usually have Thursday and Friday off as a pseudo-weekend. This past faux weekend was an especially good one, as I received my radioactive monkey prize package around lunchtime on Friday:


According to the Anti Radioactive Monkey Society, providers of the prizes, the little button stands for "no radioactive monkeys," but I've decided it can't apply to my little green monkey, because he's too damn cute to be dangerous.



Also, I'm completely enthralled by the wee barrel of monkeys:



On Thursday night, MB had presented me with a box of miniature ice cream sandwiches:


And also, flowers:



So on Friday, I decided to return the surprise:


(Dishes are one of MB's chores. I do the laundry, he does the dishes. He was quite pleased to find that he'd been let off the hook this time around.)


At some point, I looked outside and discovered that the hibiscus plants are almost as tall as I am:




By the time I got the photos together to assemble this post, the hibiscus had finally decided to bloom, for the first time this summer:







Besides ogling things in the garden and baking cookies for my man, I've been doing a lot of regular housewifey stuff, too. I've always been a huge clutter-er, and pretty much all this year, I've been keeping the place relatively clutter-free. I've been vacuuming the carpet more than once a month, and even making the bed sometimes. What's weirder than the fact that I'm doing this stuff is the fact that I've actually been enjoying it. Is it possible that I'm finally becoming domesticated? Say it ain't so!


"Did someone call for Tech Support?"






Reading:  Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich


Playing:  Howl by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club,  Soviet Kitsch by Regina Spektor