So, The Boy starts kindergarten in the fall and I'm finding that weird.
It's not so much that I'm sad he's growing up or anything, although there is sadness mixed with the joy of watching him grow (I do miss his babyisms), but I'm having trouble imagining what life will be like without him with me all day. For the past 4+ years, he and I have spent most of our waking moments together and although the constant companionship has been challenging at times, it has also been wonderful. I enjoy being the primary shaper of his world, his constant as things change.
I like being the part of his world he can count on, no matter how much things get to him, no matter how hard it is to be four (or three, or two, or one). And while I know that I will still be in that role, it is strange to think that such much of his life will be apart from me starting in September.
Sure, I know that this year it is only a couple of hours of each day, but this is the beginning of the end of him wanting to spend a lot of time with me and I'm going to miss him. I know that this is the way things are, that I am raising him to leave me, teaching him how to survive in the big bad world on his own. And I look forward to knowing the man he will slowly become, but it is hard to think about.
Yet, at the same time, I don't want to hold him back. There's a big world out there for him to conquer, and I'd never want to try and stop him. It's not that I don't want him to grow up, but that I want to keep being very important to him. I want to crystalize and save every moment between now and his adulthood and keep them in my jewelry box.
It is bizarre to think that his teacher will help to shape his reality, possibly tell him things that I don't agree with (gender stereotypes are one of my fears - shocker, what?), that he will make friends I don't like, that he will pick up habits that I can't deal with, that school, hobbies, activities and friends will cut into the time he and I have together.
I know that this is all healthy and good, but as I hear about all the challenges of dealing with older kids, I just want some reassurance that there will still be those little moments where he is all mine. Where I'll still be able to see my sweet boy in the wild eight year old, the sullen thirteen year old, the adventurous eighteen year old, and the brash university student.
Yes, this is all rather premature. But I like to frontload my thinking, get the weirdness over with so I can deal with things more easily when they happen. I'm sure that come September, I will have worked all this through and I'll be ready to deal.
And I guess September will be the beginning of The Little Guy's heyday. He doesn't know what it is like to be the only kid in the house for hours at a time. Let's see how that flies.
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Only one part of this book challenge is difficult for me.
I know you have all been waiting with bated breath (better that than baited breath - eeuuugh, worms!) to find out whether I have been keeping up on my reading, and the short answer is: Yes, I have! (Doesn't that bring you a vicarious thrill? Or something.) I've done the reading but the problem is, I haven't been able to do the reviews. So I'm going to post a list, and one sentence review of each of the books I've read and I'll get to the larger reviews in a little while (I can hear you now :"Sure you will! We won't hold our breath.").
Here we go, in no particular order.
1. The Violent Friendship of Esther Johnson by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole - Historical fiction is not usually my favorite reading, but Morgan-Cole's writing is vivid and absorbing, so I enjoyed this book.
2. Dojo Wisdom for Mothers by Jennifer Lawler - If you are a Mom, get this book immediately - it's like taking a really deep breath and letting it out slowly.
3. Mommy Guilt - Julie Bort, Aviva Pflock and Devra Renner - Good book, practical advice for avoiding some of the guilt inherent in motherhood.
4. Open by Lisa Moore - These short stories are astounding.
5. Degrees of Nakedness by Lisa Moore - Again with the astounding short stories.
6. Down to the Dirt by Joel Hynes - The characters got on my nerves, but that's due to the power of Hynes' writing.*
7. Thirteen Steps Down by Ruth Rendell - Rendell gets you inside the mind of her characters like no one else can.
8. In a Dark House by Deborah Crombie - Excellent mystery writing, Crombie's pacing is fantastic.
9. How to Talk so Your Kids Will Listen by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish - Clear advice for communicating effectively with kids, I enjoyed it.
10 Your Four Year Old: Wild & Wonderful by Louise Bates Ames and France Lillian Ilg - I think they actually used my four year old as the test case for this book - so helpful!
I own about half of these, the others I borrowed from the library.
As for my other goals? Well, I'm doing okay
with them. I'm making progress with several articles, I'm exercising
fairly regularly and writing on a regular basis.
*Please
note that this is a compliment. The fact that the characters
annoyed me so much is a testament to how clearly Hynes presented
them and their motivations. I liked the book but I'm glad I don't know Keith or Natasha, I'd feel sorry for them even while they irritated me.
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Woefully Late with my Thanks.
A couple of weeks ago, I received this
lovely item from Sherri and Amy at mamazine. Thanks so much, guys, it does a
great job of holding up The Boy's latest portrait of me.
I'm all hip now, what with the cool zine magnet and
all.
Oh, and Sheri & Amy? Your site is one of my most pleasant addictions. Mamazine rocks!
Please excuse the locational issues with the
image, I have mastered neither my digital camera nor my new
software.
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Mombie, know thyself.
Wednesday, February 15, 2005
I always find it funny what my writing reveals to me about myself.
I'm sure that anyone not living in my head is laughing themselves silly at the below post ("Normally I have two well-behaved children" blah de blah ) because I clearly frequently return to this sort of struggle for my brainpower. I mean it is obvious when I read back through my entries that this is a recurring issue, yet in real life it doesn't feel like that. Sometimes I don't post because I don't feel like fooling around with html etc at that point. Sometimes I don't post because I have nothing to say. Sometimes, I have stuff to say but I don't want to give the topic a glancing blow but I don't have time to do the in-depth discussion I want to do. Sometimes things blow over before I have time to comment. And sometimes my kids are so needy that I can't post, but then I feel that I need to post, so I post a whiny sort of entry full of apologetic tones and whatnot.
My point? My kids really are quite good on average, and we have a lot of fun together. But apparently, even when they leave me without enough energy to write a proper post (and edit old posts) they still leave me with enough energy to whine about it.
In other news, my new html editor (and I do mean *new* - the download is still warm) doesn't include the font and other tags when I paste stuff. This should speed things up considerably.
PS - Also, my whines about my kids may all sound the same, but in practice the issues are actually quite varied. Blah de blah, whiny whiny-ness.
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And then all hell broke loose
Wednesday, February 15, 2005
Under normal conditions I have two pretty well-behaved kids. Sure, they challenge me from time to time, but that's because they are kids and kids are , by nature, irrational. In the past week, however, I have had two absolutely crazy children and I may be losing my mind all together.
Yeah, so TLG? He wants to be up, up, up all the time. And I mean that in both senses of the word. He wants to be awake, and he wants to be in my arms and nothing else will do.
And The Boy? Well, every time TLG gets down for a second or falls asleep, The Boy wants to demonstrate the latest corner he turned in his social development ("Can you play with me? I'll be Spiderman and you be the Rhino, and you'll say 'I'll get you Spiderman' and I'll say...). Seriously, I don't think he has stopped talking for two straight weeks. All the nooks and crannies in my brain that aren't filled with the sound of TLG's pick-me-up noise, are filled with chatter from The Boy.*
The upshot (what *does* that actually refer to? ) of all this is that I have no energy for writing for an audience at the end of the day. I really need some daytime downtime in order to be able to write in my weblog at night, and organizing the new pages is out of the question**.
So, it is back to my usual approach. I'm going to trudge slowly through my archives, etc, and add new content as brainspace allows.
I believe the powers-that-be are wreaking vengence for my assumption that I would be able to get so much done last week. I should burn incense or something to appease them.
*Note: This is NOT the time to inform me that I'll be longing for these days when he's a sullen teenager who won't talk to me.
**Just for the record, this is not a straight-forward process. I have to copy my files into notepad and then trim out all the tags for font and whatnot. It's easy, but time-consuming.
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The best-laid plans of Mombies and friends...
Sunday, February 5, 2005
Sooo, yeah...
This is the new design. Isn't it pretty? Doesn't Greg rock? *
So, now that you've had the good news (yay, design is pretty!**). Here's the bad news: I'm not finished transferring all my old stuff. So, you probably don't want to start testing my links and that sort of thing. Just stick around here and enjoy the pretty Greg made.
I really wanted to have it all finished by now, and put up a page chock-a-block with new stuff and re-organized archives and stuff but my children plotted against me during both weekend days and then I had various social obligations to attend to on the weekend nights.
And I didn't get my new entries polished either.
But at least I put up one page of new design, right? We can still have a coffee (or tea , or whathaveyou). And I'll keep updating my files this week. AND I'll add the new posts daily. I promise. Just don't go getting all pouty and run away.
Please.
I get more than enough of that from The Boy.
* Yes, Greg does rock. And, for the record, so does the lovely Becky.
** Incidentally, the lovely design is Greg's doing, any faulty application of same (links not working, missing post author stuff) is my fault, and fixing them is on the to do list.
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Dammit. She is always making me think.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Andrea at
Decomposition posted the other day about how we (women especially) edit ourselves so as to be more palatable to society at large.
She is absolutely right. I do that, at least in real life, but it is not the full explanation for why I'm such a wimp. It is not just to make work more palatable, it is to protect myself, in a way.
Sometimes I don't post on various controversies because I don't want to attract the sort of small minded, trollish type people who are just going to come and fill my comments with vitriol and then bail again. I don't want to open myself up to people's random hatred. I know there are people who are scanning the internet, just looking for something to jump on, someone whose position they disagree with slightly that they can then attack and make themselves feel good. I'm not prepared for that, and I don't know that my mental make up allows for me to easily recover from it. Sure, I know I would get used to it, but I'm not sure I want to. I try to live like Dorothy Parker suggested ' I don't care what anybody says about me, as long as it isn't true' but I find it difficult because I'm afraid that they are somehow right, that I do have some sort of bad intent when I write something.
I also don't often post a whine about motherhood. Sure, I'll say that something is difficult and I'll try to explore why that is so, but I try not to just let fly with a full on complaint because that sort of thing is so often misunderstood. A few years ago, someone told me that I had made them decide not to have children. They could 'tell' that children were too much trouble, that they affected your life too deeply, changed who you were completely and took away all your spare time and extra money. And that made me feel very very bad, that someone was denying themselves the pleasure of children because I was being whiny.
Now to give me my due, I was 2 months pregnant, nauseated, The Boy was still waking up every three hours or less, and he was stuck in a challenging development stage, so I was a little depressive (and depressing) but I don't thinking my whining was out of proportion to the difficulties I was facing. But still, I hate the idea that someone might happen upon my weblog, read a single day's entry and conclude that I hate motherhood. The thing I can't seem to convey (and the reason that I can't completely rule out a third child) is that it is all worth it. The nausea, the depression, the aches of pregnancy, the pain of labour and childbirth, the sleepless nights, the endless breastfeeding, the 'watch me, Mommy', the changing of diapers, the toilet training...is all worth it. The joy that overwhelms me when I see my children, when I hear their voices, when I think about them growing, when The Boy shares his latest 'great idea' with me, makes the late nights and the waking in a puddle of milk a small price to pay. Yeah, motherhood is hard, but it is satisfying work and there are good parts to every single day.
I listen to lots of people complain about their jobs, and I never say 'I'm NEVER going to work, it's horrible' because I understand that they are complaining about this small thing, today. That their complaint is only part of the big picture. But for some reason, people can't understand that about parenting. It's annoying that a complaint, or a series of complaints, somehow means that you don't love your children, or that you don't 'deserve' them. For me, complaining a lot about my kids (as opposed to the 'exploring the challenge' thing I *try* to do) without explaining that this is a small issue in a greater joy, leaves me open to being misunderstood and I hate being misunderstood.
So, I think Andrea was very right, that in general, women try to put a good face on things, and that we sell things short by doing so. And I know that I do that in many real life situations but I'm not sure that those are my reasons for avoiding controversy online. I think I'm trying for clarity, for the whole picture. Perhaps that's why I am a less frequent poster, and perhaps my topics don't reach as deeply as some bloggers' topics do.
Now I have to figure out if that is a bad thing. I know I am more opinionated in person than I am online, and that's because I can read the other person's reaction and explain further, or agree to disagree. I don't have that opportunity in forums or in blog comments.
I'm toying with the idea of being braver. Let's see how that pans out.
Writing in the Hall of Justice
Thursday, January 19, 2006
or the kitchen of my house, you know, whatever works.
One of the downsides (and upsides, oddly enough) of being a writer is spending so much time alone with your work*. It's just you and the pen and paper, or screen and keyboard, blithely pouring out words to get them out of your head. That can be good when things are going well, and it's amazing when you've written something you can actually stand to read again. But the problem with isolation is that bad writing or difficulties in writing can be self-perpetuating when there is no one to help you break the habit. That's one of the reasons I have resurrected (how biblical of me!) my writers' group. I've tried to get this group going many times in the past but I've made the same mistake repeatedly: trying to find out everyone's schedule in advance and then finding a good day to meet. I do that for all sorts of projects and, let me tell you: it NEVER works. Sooooo, now I have decided that I'm going to start holding a meeting on the third Wednesday of each month and if no one shows, I'll spend two hours writing by myself. Of course, if people DO show up, then I'll be prepared to spend the two hours reading my work, hearing other peoples' work, doing writing exercises and just talking about writing. Meeting with like-minded people helps to motivate me to keep writing, and to take more risks with my work.
This has been a long, long intro to the fact that I hosted a writer's meeting last night and it was super-fantastic. My victims (I mean, ahem, guests!) were Katie and Brad, both of whom rock most thoroughly. Katie has the most interesting, quirky (in a good way!) writing, taking her stories and characters in directions I would never have thought of (one of her characters last night had a shrunken head collection). Brad has the most excellent pacing in his writing and his descriptions of ordinary things are so clear that you are immersed in his plot before you realize it. We did the usual readings, and writing exercises, and we talked a bit about freelancing and after they left, I had my chronic, post-writers'-meeting problem: I wanted to stay up and write, write, write but instead I had to feed TLG and try to get some sleep in case this was another 'stay-up and party**' night for his majesty.
I miss being able to write between 11:00pm & 1:00am, I often did my clearest writing during those hours (apparently us year-of-the-rat people are 'on' at that time of night). I hope I can still do that once I'm setting my own sleep schedule again (you know, in 8 or 10 years- ha, ha!)
*No, I don't really get THAT much time alone but when I'm working I am by myself, which is my point here. Carry on.
** Which, for one year olds, consists of nursing frequently with alternate bouts of sitting up between your parents patting them on the face with your hands and standing up holding onto the headboard while trying to rip down the poster from the wall. Whoo! Party!
I just remembered something funny
Monday, January 16, 2006
The Man and I were talking about how you get a whole new life* once you have kids, the life you had before is overlaid by this parental one**.
This can be demonstrated by the following example:
April, 2001: Mombie (to-be) points out two lines on the pregnancy test, The Man shouts 'We've got baby sign!!
April, 2004: Mombie points out two lines on the pregnancy test, The Man sings 'We did it, we did it. We got two lines on the pregnancy test. We did it!!'
Astute geeks will recognize the first reaction as an MST3K reference. Astute parent-geeks will recognize the second, not as a reference to baby-making activities, but as the victorious closing number from Dora the Explorer.
This is what I'm sayin'.
*Not just in the sense that the baby is a whole new life
** Yeah, it is not true to say that having a child changes your life. That doesn't really cover it in my books (nor in
Harriet Lerner's either, despite her title. You really get a whole new life, with new ways of seeing and an appreciation for different things. Mock if you like, I don't care. :)
Book #2: As You Think By James Allen
January 16, 2006
I had a rough week last week. Baby No-Nap's reign of terror continued, and the four year old maelstrom whipped through the house virtually unabated by my efforts to contain him. So by Friday night I was both exhausted and behind (although I did successfully pitch an article this past week). I hadn't done any exercise all week, I hadn't read a book and I hadn't done any writing. I felt like I had just dragged myself through the week, with my only goals being 1) not to fall asleep in my supper 2) be civil to my crazy children.
I did manage to do both of my revised goals for the week :P but I was feeling down about my original ones. Then Saturday came and I had slept pretty well. So I read an 85 page book (see below) in the tub. After I got out, got dressed, and dried my hair (luxury! TLG is afraid of the hair dryer so trying to dry my hair is a nightmare when The Man's not home to hold TLG at the same time), I took both boys for a two hour walk to pick up some things at Staples and the Bulk Barn.
After having supper and hanging out with The Man and the kids (oh, and Derek!) for a while, I was further inspired and did an hour of writing, then exercised (a pilates, yoga, strength-training combo) for an hour.
Sooooo, despite a difficult week, I accomplished all my goals. They were done all in one day, but at least I did them.
The Date: January 14, 2006
The Book:
As You Think by James Allen (updated and edited by Marc (no relation) Allen.
The Blurb: This is one of those books that will really get a on a lot of people's nerves, particularly if they just give it a quick look. It is that kind of a 'power of positive thinking' book that is often misused by irritating people to push their pollyanna attitudes on others. (I HATE being told to 'look on the bright side' when things are bad, and people could lift things out of this book to support that kind of chirping').
That being said, this book is not actually just saying. blithely, that we always need to look on the bright side. What it is saying is that we need to try to cultivate positive thoughts so we don't get discouraged, and we need to stay focussed on our goals, and making steps towards them, so we can enjoy our accomplishments and build on them. This is different than just 'looking on the bright side' because 'looking on the bright side' can be superficial and
As You Think is about making your subconscious work with you instead of against you, which is anything but superficial.
There are a lot of helpful things to think about in this book, but there are also some annoyances. The original author seems to have been one of those people who pulled themselves out of poverty through luck and determination and decide that if they can do it, anyone can. And I think that is naive. I agree that anyone can improve their situations by cultivating a healthier mental position, but there are environmental and sociological obstacles preventing many people from making their way in the world with ease. 'Mind over matter' will not always cut it if you are caught in a cycle of poverty. Determination and a healthy, supportive subconscious can only go so far, external circumstances can play a role in your success. Some people do not have access to the sorts of training and support than many take for granted, and may not have the luxury of reading books like
As You Think to help them change their attitudes towards their lives.
Overall,
As You Think is an interesting book, and the approaches described within can be useful for someone in my relatively priviledged middle-class position who may just need a little help breaking out of ruts of negativity. But if I expect that someone facing actual poverty would be insulted and irritated by the approach this book advises you to take to overcome your problems.
I need to come up with a rating system I think. I'll add that to my goals list for this week.
Book #1: Why The Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down
January 9, 2006
The Date: January 1-7th, 2006
The Book:
Why the Toast Always Lands Butter Side Down: The Science of Murphy's Law by Richard Robinson
The Blurb: When I picked up this book on the bargain shelves at Chapters right before Christmas I was planning to give it to someone else, but I decided, on a whim, to keep it for myself and I'm glad I did.
When I first read the subtitle 'The Science of Murphy's Law', I naturally assumed that the whole book was about 'whatever can go wrong will go wrong', which would have been a difficult topic for a book. Luckily, this one covers some of the specific permutations of Murphy's Law - why the other line always moves more quickly, why you can look for something in the same place six times and then find it there on the seventh try, and of course, the toast conundrum of the title.
The general explanation for all of the specific Murphy's Law examples is that we are using brains designed in the Paleolithic world in order to understand our modern one. So we make errors in our attempt to process things around us and then proceed from those errors. This leads to us misjudging time (while waiting in line for the bathroom we perceive time as moving much more quickly than it does) or misjudging distance (the line of cars next to us seems to move more quickly but it is really just that they are moving while we are still and vice versa), doing guesswork to fill in details, giving human characteristics to inanimate objects (damn camera never works when I need it). All of these things contribute either to making Murphy's Laws work, or to making us perceive that they do.
The specific explanations for the various phenomena that Robinson describes are very interesting and made me think a little more about things that I, without much questioning, believe to be true. That, in itself, would be reason to read the book.
Oh, and about the toast? Well, a) you just don't notice when it lands butter side up - it's a non-event and b)if the toast was falling froma great height it would turn over and over and over while falling but the distance from your plate to the floor is sometimes only enough room for half a revolution - hence, splat.
Today, I was annoyed before I even got out of bed...
January 3, 2006
Soooo, at 12:30 last night, just as I was settling in for a long winter's nap (or something like that. Work with me here, people!), The Little Guy woke up and decided it was time for an in-depth conversation. Not that he is capable of conversation yet, it was more of a time for extended vocalization and some flapping of arms and general squirming. After about an hour, he fell into a fitful sleep, which (luckily) evenutally (after an hour or so) became real sleep. He woke up at 5 to nurse for 40 minutes and then at 6:22am decided it was time to get up for the day.
All of that was annoying (well, except for the roughly two hours of decent sleep in the middle, that was okay) but the most annoying thing? That would be the dream I had between 6:22 and 7:25 when The Man woke me up so he could get ready for work.
What was this dream you ask?
WELL!
I dreamt that The Little Guy was fussing and fidgeting next to me and that The Man wouldn't wake up and take him downstairs for a while like he usually does. I got increasingly annoyed with the (dream) situation until finally I snapped at The Man 'Will you PLEASE just take him for a few minutes?'. The (dream) Man (hee hee!) picked up The Little Guy and quickly left the room at 7:24, glaring at me while he left.
Sooooo, when The (actual, but still rather dreamy) Man woke me up at 7:25, my first words to him were 'No way, you [u]just[/u] left.' and he, not having been in my dream, confusedly replied 'I've been up for an hour'. That's when I realized that the universe and I were not going to be friends today. How is it fair to make a mombie dream about being even more sleepless?
Luckily, I made up with the universe a little later in the morning and overall had a pretty decent day. Now, I have my fingers crossed that I'm not going to dream about changing dirty diapers, or something equally annoying, all night tonight.
Oh and speaking of diapers (don't turn away, this is a good thing), the lovely and talented
Meagan and her friend
Toni (who is also lovely and talented) have just launched Diapers to Deadlines, a
site and
messageboard for writing parents. They are both juggling the writing/parenting thing quite successfully so if you want to figure out how to do that, head on over.
I, The Smartmouth Mombie, hereby resolve...
January 1, 2006
Andrea calls herself a freak today because she makes (and keeps) New Year's resolutions. Well, make some room in the freak show for me, Andrea, because I do too.
Well, I don't always manage to keep all of my resolutions but I do always make progress in those areas. It's a little hard to tell in January what the year will bring and sometimes my plans are no longer feasible once a few months have passed. But (and this has been a hard lesson for me) there is nothing wrong with re-evaluating your plans if the first ones no longer meet your needs.
I used to be one of those people who had to stick to the original plan, even if it was no longer appropriate, mostly because I didn't want to disappoint the people around me or give them opportunity to make fun of me for changing my mind. Then, of course, I realized that I was living my life, not theirs, and I had to please myself first and foremost. I still have a little trouble dealing with people who get snotty with me about changing my plans, but I'm working on it.
So, anyway, as for my plans for this year (there are more, but these are my public ones):
1) Read and review 50 books I already own (this was inspired by
Doppleganger's blog)
2) Write 20 publishable pieces (articles, stories or whatever). I have no control over whether these get published, but I want to write 20 things that COULD be published.
3) Exercise 3 hours per week. Yoga, Pilates, Walks, strength training - as long as it adds up to 3 hours, I'm good.
4) Freewrite 4 hours per month. (10 minutes per day, most days)
My plan is to review these goals in three months and see how I'm doing and see if I still want to pursue them.
Wish me luck.
Actually, to hell with luck, wish me dedication!
