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Weblog Archives June 26, 2004 So even though I'm only 14 weeks pregnant I am already v. awkward. To look at me, I barely have a bump, I'd have to point it out to people (if I was so inclined) but yet it manages get solidly in my way quite often. Especially when I am trying to get off the couch or out of the car. I think it is a matter of placement rather than bulk. Imagine trying to get off the couch with say, a loaf of bread on your lap. Not really an easy matter. But anyway... I'm actually planning to enter a writing contest this week. I'm just trying to decide whether to send a story I've already got done or try and finish one I have in progress. I'm rather nervous about it though, letting a story get out there, but there's not much point in being a writer if you don't release your work. I've been trying to teach The Boy about people's jobs lately. I've managed to make him understand that his Daddy makes signs at work (he sometimes claims that Daddy makes cookies at work but I think he's teasing) and that my work is looking after him and writing stories. It was a real thrill today when he got out of the bath and ran in to my office and said 'you at work Mommy? you making stories?' I felt all validated. Yay for little kids, or at least Yay for my kid. Jason: Thanks for your dedication to the cause, as always. Matthew: Nice work today! In other news: I FINISHED A STORY!!!!!! Check it out here. June 24, 2004 This is Discovery Day for the City of St. John's, Newfoundland's capital city. It's nice to celebrate a city's history but some of the promo that the city does just rots me. now, I don't mean promo specifically for Discovery Day, just the promo in general. The thing that really gets me is the one of the popular taglines in marketing materials for the city- 'Oldest City in North America'. Now sure, St. John's is the oldest EUROPEAN city in North America but there were a million people in Mexico City a thousand years ago. Doesn't that count as a city? I mean, really. Now, I know as an anthropologist/ archaeologist I'm more sensitive to these issues but dammit, doesn't anyone employ a friggin' fact checker? Wouldn't you want to be absolutely sure before you claimed to be the biggest, oldest, smallest, hungriest anything? It drives me, absolutely drives me. I don't get out enough. On to something else: So sometimes, I try to get The Boy out of the way so I can get stuff done and other times I throw caution and sanity to the wind and get him to roll up his sleeves and help me. I was feeling brave today so I decided that instead of talking him into watching the Berenstain Bears I would let him help me make supper. It was absolutely hilarious. We were having meatloaf (shut up! it's The Man's second favorite meal after pizza) and garlic instant mashed potatoes and corn. I let The Boy press the microwave buttons to thaw the ground beef (yeah I've probably altered his genes by letting him that close to the microwave - it's too late now), then I put all the other ingredients for the meatloaf in measuring cups and let him dump them in the bowl and stir. ("I'm dumping!" "I'm stirring. I can stir, Mommy"), before you all have heartfailure - I mixed in the ground beef and made the actual loaf and put it in the oven. Then came the really funny part, I get him to pour the 1/2 cup of milk, 1 1/2 cups of water and the 2tbsps of butter into the pot and I turn to get a spoon. He starts stirring it anyway...with his hands! He was mixing milk with his hands. I'm laughing now just thinking about it. I mean I washed his hands before we started but who the hell knows what might be living under his nails? I clean his hands all the time and try to scrub his nails but it's not high on his list of fun things to do so I may miss some stuff. And that stuff may have ended up floating in our milk. My pre-parent self might have balked at that but my Mombie self? I just put it on the stove to boil. Boiling kills germs, right? Ha ha. Anyway, the greatest part was when The Man returned from hunting the mighty elephant (or, you know, managing the sign store) and The Boy rushed up to him and said 'I made you supper, I made you supper'. 'Oh' says The Man 'what did you make?' And the boy replied 'Beans.' Actually I take that back, the greatest part may have been when The Boy went upstairs with The Man while TM got changed out of his work clothes. The Man scooped The Boy up into his arms for a hug and The Boy pointed at him and said 'You're Captain Meatloaf!' I'm thinking of calling The Man that from now on. Whaddya think, Captain Meatloaf? Meagan: Good luck with team puke. June 21, 2004 I've been doing a lot of thinking about writing lately. I know that's not as good as actually doing a lot of writing, but, hey it's a start. And I'm feeling very confident about the ideas I'm having, like they might grow into something important, and maybe even profitable. I may actually soon reach the point where I could submit some stuff. Ages ago I bought this book called Deadly Women which is about female mystery writers (I'm a writer, I love to read about writing) and Margaret Maron had the most intriguing list*of writing advice I've ever read listed with her interview. Point 7 is where I always get hung up. I just can't submit. I hate to do it in real life, I hate to do it with my writing. Now before you start thinking that I'm one of those disagreeable people who must always be right (I am! No wait...) I don't mean that I cling to my version of things long after it becomes ridiculous. I can't submit, but I will concede, agree to disagree, or pretend we never had the discussion. I will not however, submit. Appeals to authority don't fly with me, and trying to bully me won't work either. So perhaps the issue with my writing (and here is where the connection between the three paragraphs above hopefully becomes clear) is in the word submit. I can't bear to be the submissive, I must brandish the whip. Obviously I need to find a word to describe the process of sending my work to editors that doesn't note leave me feeling like the supplicant, even if that is what I am. Note to self: Find Thesaurus... *sorry for the freaky image, I'm having a little trouble exporting a gif file from Coreldraw right now. June 19, 2004 So Hilary and I teach this drama class for kids (6-10 year olds) and it's a real adventure. One week the kids are all willing to learn and you can hear them soaking up the info like sponges, translating the games into mad drama skilz (like that hip talk there? Yeah, me neither). Then other days they would rather be fishing or something because they are like a bunch of high bouncers tossed into a teeny tiny room. Not a healthy environment for a pregnant dame, let me tell you. Anyway, today was their final show for the year and they really pulled it together, they totally rocked. I was really impressed, they were completely un-high-bouncer-like and I had fun. And they seemed to enjoy themselves too. So thanks to Hilary for her excellent sets and props, thanks to Jason and Katie for doing everything else that needed to be done. I think it's time for me to lie down again. I have had a headache since Thursday afternoon and it is not fun at all. Meagan: we're playing chat tag, but hopefully I'll catch you later! June 16, 2004 I'm in one of those states where I have lots of stuff I could write about but I can't figure out which one to settle on. How about I start with the incredible coolness of my new online friend Meagan? I wish she lived here instead of in the U.S. so we could hang out in person instead of just chatting on line. She's a freelancer too and by that I mean that she is an actual freelancer and I'm a freelancer wannabe but maybe if we keep chatting some of her freelancerness will rub off. At least virtually and then I would at least be able to send articles to web sources, right? In other news, I gave a presentation to City Council on Tuesday. I think it went pretty well and it seemed well received. Mount Pearl had better brace itself because I have only begun to move and to shake (and I'm not referring to my rapidly increasing weight, I'm referring to my political clout). And now for something completely different: another weird thing about being pregnant is that I cannot rely on my body at all. I don't mean that I am tripping over my feet or that I forget how to chew or anything but I just have no idea what I'm capable of any more. I may be able to take an hour long walk and breeze through the rest of my day or strolling the boy around the kitchen a few times to put him to sleep may require me to lie down to recover. I may be able to stay up until 1am no problem, or staying up until 11pm may cause me to feel dragged out all the next day. This is an adventure and this kid better be damn cute. And I think I'm done! June 11, 2004 So I have become addicted to reading weblogs lately, especially ones from moms and pregnant dames (or recently pregnant dames ). If I was properly humble I would probably say that mine doesn't compare to theirs but I'm not so I think mine holds up pretty well. Maybe it isn't as detailed but meh! And I've found out this week that my site crashes Macs so I'm going to reopen my weblog on blogger sometime soon so more people can read it (if they're so inclined) and I can become famous. Or whatever. And in other writing news, I've joined a yahoo group called insecure writers. I'm not so much insecure about what I write but I'm insecure wbout where to send it to be published or to make me a lot of money. Anyway, I'm crazy about this group so far, they seem very friendly and it is small enough to know who's who. I've joined other online writing groups before but they had been going so long that they were kind of clique-ish. Not exclusionary or anything, just long established and with a lot of in-jokes that you couldn't follow the history of without reading thousands of posts. I don't have that kind of time. Anyway, I like insecure writers and I feel like I can ask all my dumb questions in there without being ridiculed. Now for something completely different: The Boy said the cutest, most endearing thing to me this week. I was sitting weakly on the couch (yucky pregnant dame morning) leaning forward with my forearms on my knees and The Boy comes towards me and says 'open your hug for me, please'. I melted into a pile of goo, I swear. Open your hug to me! Who could resist that, ever? Luckily I didn't have to. June 9, 2004 So after supper The Man took The Boy to pick up UncoDan from work and then went to visit my inlaws. So I have an unexpected evening to myself. I hardly know what to do. I have about 85,000 things I could do but I can't really settle on one. I have already checked on some freelance listings to see where I might market my work. I'm very weird and ambivalent about freelancing for magazines and the like. I don't really want to research and write a huge article that I might not be able to sell, I don't have time for that. Yet, I am afraid of querying with a letter then being unable to to write the article. Gah. And I'm not sure I want to deal with the learning curve over and over again for each new topic. On the other hand, I don't know if I want to be constantly marketing to small businesses either. I know I could make money that way but it could be a lot of work for very little pay. And I could be dealing with payment hassles. I'd really like to write fiction for a living but that will be a long time coming. So bleh, what do I do? I guess I try a little of each one and see which one is the most lucrative in the time I have to devote to it. Anyway... So I've checked out the freelance markets, I've written in here, I've chatted with Jason, I'm going to catch up with my journal, and then maybe I'll either work on a story or try some more writerly planning until those Y chromosome - types return. June 8, 2004 So I have been thinking about joining some webrings for a while now but I've been putting it off. I wanted to fill up my site a little before committing to a ring. Then I realized how dumb that is. Committing to a ring? Yeah, I'm marrying a webring apparently. gah! And besides the dumbness inherent in that statement, it is also dumb of me to put off joining a few rings 'until I fill up my site' , when will the site be full enough for me? Who the hell knows? So I'm going to do it and hope I increase my traffic a little, despite the terror that inspires in me. More later perhaps... June 2, 2004 Me and The Boy were out on an abenture today. Sadly, that actually means that we hung out at the mall and at Chapters all afternoon, but hey at least that's some variety for him! And we did have a very nice lunch at Pasta Plus. I had lunch there two weeks ago and had the pleasant experience of being full until suppertime so I thought I'd like to try that again, hurrah for spaghetti Bolognese! Usually, I have to eat about every two hours so getting to go a whole afternoon without snacking is a treat. You wouldn't think you could get tired of eating but I'm here to tell you that you certainly can. I had my last writing class of the year this evening. It's going to be weird not seeing those guys until September. I'll really miss forcing myself to write for that hour and a half and I'll miss the energy that is created by all those different perspectives on the same topic. I'd like to have a bigger class in the fall, hopefully I'll get my marketing skill in gear by then. I'm tired, I'm off to bed. (yes, one does get tired of being tired too. And no one doesn't care that saying 'one' makes ones sound pretentious.) June 1, 2004 Well, hello June! When did you get here? Man, time flies when you are lying around feeling tired and nauseated. Well not really but the days do sort of blend into one another. So I was a good Mombie-to-be today, doing a full fledged pregnant dame workout. I'm pretty sure it wasn't supposed to take me two hours but there were no pictures in my guidebook of stopping to read a Teletubbies book to a toddler, or having to rescue said toddler from a table top so I guess that probably ate up a lot of time. Funny how these workout tapes and videos never show people wrangling toddlers while pregnant :) I met my cousin's son Owen for the first time today. The child is almost two months old but between nausea, two colds and evening obligations I haven't been able to get over to see him until now. He doesn't seem to have suffered for it though, he seems to have toughed it out. Of course, now that he's met me I'm sure his life is much brighter :) I'm having a twinge of 'my-kid-is- growing-up-too-fast' today. My in-laws have offered to put The Boy in daycare a couple of mornings a week in the fall (have I mentioned this already? well, anyway...) which would be cool because then I'd have some definite writing time each week and The Boy would be getting some new experiences and making new friends. But then I think about my poor little boy, left alone with strangers for hours at a time. what if he hates it? What if he is miserable? I know I'm lucky to have the choice to put him in daycare or not, and I'm lucky to have generous in-laws. So perhaps I shouldn't complain, or worry too much about it. But when has that stopped me before? Let me think...oh NEVER! I'm sure he'll have a great time, but I'm really conflicted about it. I think part of it is very selfish, I'm not sure I want him to have fun that I'm not a part of. He's only two and a half, can't his solo adventures wait a while? Meh, undoubtedly I'll deal with this the same way I do with a lot of difficult things. I'll fake it 'til I make it. I'll put it out of my head until it really is all right. It's not like I'm contemplating dangling him over a pit of vipers or anything. It's daycare, they have trained professionals working there, they have interesting activites, they have different toys. It's all good. The next question, of course, is how the hell do you pick a daycare? Where do you start? Ack! © Christine C. Hennebury 2003 |
