Hootiepalooza

Idiosyncratic Favorite Things

2007-07-25T16:35:00.000-06:00

Every once in a while people post a list of favorite things. Usually including their favorite color, their favorite food, favorite alcoholic beverage, and so forth. This gets sent around to "10 of their favorite friends" for those people to fill out their versions of the list, copy the person who sent it, and send it to their favorite friends. The world's most boring chain letter.

Well I think it would be much more interesting to have a list of a person's most idiosyncratic favorite things. Such as the following....

1. Favorite part of your body:
Mine has got to be my irises. Their color defies standard description. Yellow in the middle near the pupil. Moving to green, then blue, then charcoal around the outside edge. What the hell color do you call that on your driver's license? Usually I say green, but honestly, it's not a color at all. It's a sort of weird earth-toned rainbow.

2. Favorite way to have attention showered on you:
Getting a massage. If someone will just rub on my back and feet and hands for an hour, I'm in pure heaven. JUST DON'T FRIGGING TALK TO ME WHILE YOU DO IT. Nothing bugs me more than to pay someone for an hour of blissful massage, only to be TALKED to death. I don't want to make a friend, I want to relax, for crying out loud.

3. Favorite condiment:
Ranch dressing. I could eat it with anything, on almost anything savory, even by itself if it weren't gauche to do so. Closely followed by salsa.

4. Favorite old thing:
Old trucks. I ADORE old pickup trucks. Usually blue ones or red ones or orange ones. We have two geriatric orange trucks a block or so north of us, and when we go walking, I wonder at how it is possible there are two of them, two different makes (I think one is a chevy, and one is a ford) in two different old eras, but on my same street, two blocks up. They are just cool as shit. With a bench seat? Even better. And a big ass steering wheel, and a very roundy hood, with big circular lights. I LOVE old trucks.

5. Favorite style of underwear: (in this category, I note there are limited options, which I will outline here... correct me if I am wrong). There's the g-string, the thong, the string bikini, the boy short, the hipster, the standard bikini, the hi-cut brief, and the brief (aka granny panties). And for the really unusual, there's the boxer, but that's appropriating guy underwear into a girl lineup. But it's an option. It's valid. There are various types of material - satin, silk, cotton, microfiber, nylon, lace.
My favorites are cotton boy shorts or hipsters. Don't get near my ass with a thong. Butt floss. Ew.

6. Favorite thing to spend money on: shoes, hands down.

7. Favorite thing you have had for at least 15 years but cannot bear to part with, despite its age and state of dilapidation:
a pair of shoes, Italian in origin, leather in material, that I got in Germany for over $200 in 1988. They are known as my "warlock shoes" as they look like something a witch or warlock might wear. The dog chewed the back off one of them when he was a puppy (the same dog who we had put down in March, the one who isn't even alive anymore, he was so old). They fit better than any other shoes I own and I LOVE them. Don't TOUCH my shoes.

8. Favorite place to be alone: in the bathroom - I rarely get that opportunity anymore, with my 4 year old. It's a treat when I am. This includes shower/tub bath.

9. Favorite type of cheese: very very very sharp, aged white cheddar. Then epoisses.

10. Favorite thing to sleep in: an old beat-up pair of Old Navy capri jammy pants and my Gap cultu(red) shirt. I don't sleep in the nude, don't care to, don't like my parts touching my other parts. Gross.

Doing Things I Love

2007-06-21T11:22:00.000-06:00

So it's been months since I last wrote anything on this blog. There are a few reasons for that. First off, I think I sorta ran out of things to say which I thought were worth saying. Not like there's much of an audience, not like I am writing to the masses or anything. But generally speaking, it's a public blog. And I thought I really ought to write something that someone would want to even bother reading.
Secondly, I started spending the bulk of my free time with other artistic endeavors - ones I feel I'm reasonably good at! Like painting (watercolors) and selling them via eBay. And making a quilt. And other sewing projects - though I'm not terribly good at sewing, I'm working on it. I've picked up a little crocheting of wool, trying to learn how to felt wool and make a few little handbags with felted wool flowers on them. There are tons of options, things I could do with my free time. I just don't have that much of it. And I used to spend it CLEANING, which I've stopped doing with such avid perfectionism. I do have a 2x monthly housekeeper, and I've taken to just vacuuming the floors periodically, and wiping down the bathroom every few days, and keeping the kitchen clean. And that's about it. The housekeeper can do the rest of that stuff! I'd rather spend my free time, when I'm not doing something with Hootie, being creative, and I'm really enjoying the financial rewards of selling my things, in order to do some much desired/wanted things with my money. A new dining room table, a new leather couch, a quilt for my bed, a clothing shopping spree... WHEE! It's been awesome.
I think that it's good when you have the ability to do so, to spend some money on things you don't like doing. Like cleaning house. I don't mind cleaning house, I just don't like it as much as I like painting. I have only so much time, which is more the luxury for me, that I'd rather spend it doing things that relax and decompress me.
So that's what I've been doing!

How She Came To Be Called "Hootie"

2007-04-24T12:21:00.000-06:00

So everyone always asks, at one point or another. "Hootie? That's cute. How'd she get that nickname?"
I usually want to say, "She just did. It's cute. It fits her. Leave it at that. You don't want to know." Because every time I tell the story, when I'm done, people give me a look which seems to indicate that the time it takes to listen to the story isn't worth it for the end result. It's one of those stories where it contains a lot of detail and no punchline. But if I actually say, "you don't want to know," somehow people are compelled to ask anyway. Or think it's something "dirty."
Even if I say, "It's a long story...," people still ask, "so? That's okay," and encourage me to continue.
So here it is.
When I was pregnant, I called the little critter in my belly "the Skeezix". Because she was quite active, and jumpy, and moved around quite a bit, like this character in the movie "Dark Crystal" which was called a Skeezix. I also called her many other things. Like predominantly "Fluff". Or "Fluffer". Until I found out what a Fluffer is. Um, NOT.
When she was born, I started calling her Skeezer, or Skeezeroo. At some point, that would morph into Skeezerooney, or just Rooney or Rufus. The husband would walk into her bedroom and say, "Hoo-fus? Roo-fus!" and started calling her, "The Hoo". Very early on, she was known as "The Hoo" or "Hoof." And instead of singing the song, "Who let the dawgs out?" (of course, by Snoop Dogg) we'd sing, "Who let the Hoof out? Who? Who? Who? Who?"
Then at some point Hoof and Hoo morphed into "Hootie". And that stuck. She started turning her head when we said it. She would tell people Hootie was her name. For the longest time, she didn't even KNOW what her real name was. She always answered "Hootie." Her first birthday cake had Hootie on the top, every single birthday party she's had since she commemorated her first year has been known as "Hootiepalooza". Which is how this site got its name.
Now she knows her real name, but tells people Hootie is her nickname. Though she also still goes by many, many other nicknames. Skeezer. Hoofus. The Hoo, Ninga (first set of consistent syllables she strung together, while playing with her feet in her crib). Skeez Malteez. Malteaser. Hootiefish. Hootie Patootie. Hoolie (my nephew calls her that, because he couldn't say "Hootie" for a long time). Hootsin (her Moosie calls her that). And variations of her actual name, such as Lex and Lexi.

And Now For Something Completely Different

2007-03-29T15:48:00.000-06:00

1- Can you cook? If yes, do you like to cook?

I love to cook, I can cook, and yet, I don't do it as much as I'd like because of my child who likes to "help". And by help I mean drop and break things, pour half the ingredients onto the counter, you know, stuff which makes the food not taste so great.

2 - When does your whole family come together to eat?

Dinner only. Husband eats at work for lunch and breakfast. We sort of take stuff on the run. But dinner is sacred.

3 - What do you have for breakfast?

A Luna bar. Though I adore breakfast food, it makes me HUGE.

Sometimes though, I allow myself a breakfast taco minus eggs, and/or a pastry. Those are my favorites.

4 - When, where and how do you eat during the week?

Breakfast - Luna bar around 10 after having had 4 cups of coffee w/fat free creamer and splenda.

Lunch - a yogurt, piece of fruit, around noon, while my daughter eats a healthy balanced meal.

Snack - 3:30 pm - crackers and cheese, or a handful of raisins and a Diet Coke, while Hootie eats a snack of her choice.

Dinner - 6:30 pm when husband gets home. I usually cook something really healthy - something from a Weight Watchers recipe or else something hearty but good for you. A stew, a soup, something like this, with a veggie on the side and all of us at the table, set nicely, and with prayers first.

5 - How often do you eat out?

Maybe once or twice a week all-told, like including lunches with a friend and possibly once a weekend with the family.

6 - How often do you order-in or take-away?

Rarely. Maybe once a month or every other month?

7 - Re: 5 & 6 - If money was no question, would you like to do it more often?

Not really. It's not very healthy, it's usually loaded in fats, sugars, and MSG. I prefer to cook if I'm not terribly busy.

8 - Are there any standards that make regular appearances on your table?

Fish, Chicken-based Indian food. Stews, soups, navy beans and bacon, homemade spaghetti or other pasta/Italian foods I make from scratch. A big fat Greek salad. Roasted red pepper soup. Crusty wheat baguettes. Fajitas.

9 - Have you ever tried a recipe from another blog?

Not yet.

10 - Are there any quarrels because of food?

No. Other than w/the child, who will one day gobble down chicken, and the next day say, "EW! I don't LIKE chicken." Then we go through a time out for being rude to her mother and the cook, and then we eat.

11 - Are you vegetarian or can you imagine living vegetarian?

Not, but all but for BBQ every once in a while and the occasional steak, I think I could be. I don't like it OFTEN, but when you want a good steak, you want one, and that's just that.

12 - What would you like to try out that you haven’t dared yet?

I'm adventurous with food, and will/have tried most everything. Those things I haven't tried I have no interest in it.

13 - Do you rather cook or bake?

I love both, but I don't bake often because it's SO DANG FATTENING! And when you gain weight by looking at food, not even smelling or tasting it, you have to be very careful. So I'd say baking, because it's such a rarity in my life.

14 - What was the most terrible mess you made in the kitchen?

I clean as I go. I don't usually have a disaster. Though Thanksgiving for 12 was a big ass mess. That doesn't even FIT INTO THE DISHWASHER.

15 - What do your kids like to eat best? What would your kids never eat?
Hootie likes to eat tortillas, breakfast foods, yogurt, any vegetable save lettuce or leafy stuff, and fruit. She isn't fond of meat, and she'd NEVER EAT SUSHI ever. But neither do I. I have texture issues with sushi and eggs. She's only just shy of 4 though, so I'd have to say we have a lot of time to develop adamant taste issues. LOTS OF TIME. My nieces hate just about everything but chili their mother makes (not mine, mind you, just hers), spaghetti their mom makes, and bread. And if it's green, FORGET IT.

Time That Came To An End

2007-03-26T13:41:00.000-06:00

So, on Friday afternoon, after my last post, we had to take the dog to be put down. All morning long, the dog followed me around, velcroed to my leg, and just looked sad. Lots of heavy panting and pacing going on, which I know meant pain. I had gone to pick Hootie up from preschool, and afterwards we went to get some grapefruit-sized river rocks from the quarry to surround the new lavender bed I am making in my front yard. The guys were out in the yard pulling up my ivy bed (where the lavender would go) and I went inside to get some water. The dog was lying in a spot entirely atypical for him to lie. He was on his side, legs straight out and floppy, which was also quite unusual since he's been only gingerly getting up and down over the last week. He wasn't panting, he was breathing slowly, and his lip was floppy on the floor. When I came in, he raised up his head a second, then put it back down on the floor. I thought maybe we'd just woken him up, since he's been exhausted, not sleeping well for the last week. I leaned down to give him a bite of my NutriGrain bar, and he didn't even sniff at it. This was the biggest tell-tale sign for me. This dog has ravenously eaten anything and everything I have given him in all 13 years of his life. He just isn't a dog who turns away a bite of food, especially HUMAN food, the Holy Grail and very rarely offered. It was about 3:45pm on a Friday and the thought of going through the weekend and risking the possibility that the dog could die in my house, while I'm alone with my 3 1/2 year old child... that wasn't even remotely okay with me. I can't lift him myself without a lot of effort and strain on my already bad shoulder, and what do you do with a deceased dog on a weekend anyway?! He couldn't even stand up. I knew it was time. So I called the vet, asked them to prepare a room, that I was bringing him up. I had been telling Hootie that Floyd was sick, and wouldn't be with us much longer, so it wasn't a total shock to her when I said she needed to lie down on the floor with him and say her goodbyes to him. She was very sad, crying on him and telling him how much she loved him, how he's been such a good dog and she will really miss him. Then she asked me why he had to die. I said that he is old, and has gotten very sick, and it's not something the doctors can fix anymore. But it is much better for us to help him die and go to heaven rather than let him suffer in pain here on earth until he dies on his own. She asked me about heaven, where it is and what it is. We've said prayers at night for a while now, and we say grace before meals, and she goes to a Christian preschool, so she's heard terms like God, Jesus, heaven, and so forth. But this was her first experience with it right up in her face. I told her that in heaven, Floyd will be able to run through the pasture chasing rabbits and chewing sticks and rawhide. He'll always have a big bowl of food to eat and fresh water to drink, and the energy to run and play all day. She said that would be good for Floyd, but she'll miss him. She wanted to see if she could go visit him, and I had to tell her no, we won't see Floyd until WE go to heaven, when we die. Of course she wanted to know when that's going to be, and I told her nobody ever really knows. But it'll be a long, long, long time from now.
I had to get one of the workers from outside to come lift him from the living room and into the back of my Subaru, and I'm sure he was a little wigged out by me crying the whole time. We drove up, and the staff let us into the room. They brought him in on a stretcher from the back of my car, and Hootie hugged him one last time. The staff of the clinic took her and kept her busy while I sat with him. They gave him an injection that would make him fall asleep first, so that he would not have any experience of the sensation of euthanasia. I held his head in my lap while the injection worked, and he fell asleep. I took off his collar and I said my goodbyes to him and told him he'd been a good dog. Then I left and took Hootie home while they completed the euthanasia. I couldn't sit and watch that part. I just couldn't do that, and Hootie was starting to look and call for me anyway out in the lobby. So I took her home, and went about the process of cleaning up the reminders of the dog. Leashes, dinner bowl, water dish, medicine, brushes, nail trimmers, dog bed.
I look around at night and see where his bed used to be, and I know that I miss him. I am sort of relishing in the fact that my house isn't filthy and full of dog hair. I don't know what to do with that extra 20 minutes a day that I used to spend stick-vacuuming the house of dog fur. :-) But I miss things like him putting his big heavy blonde head on my leg while I paint, or the little sounds he'd make while lying down. We aren't getting another, despite Hootie having asked me several times if we can get a new pet. And she doesn't mean a fish. I know she wants another dog. She'd take a cat, but we can't do cats since we're allergic (me and the husband). So we'll have to just make due with each other and no animal for a while.

Realities of Life

2007-03-23T08:56:00.000-06:00

I was rereading my Happiness Is post, noting how... idealistic I sound. Sometimes I think I'm full of shit. Not that anything in there is wrong or something I don't think, broadly speaking, but it doesn't help with the realities of life, as I'm dealing with them.
It's been raining or pissing wetness for the whole week. I've had to wear my hair curly for days on end to avoid the bushy, fuzzy nightmare which is my "straightened" hair in humidity and rain. The back laundry area is a muddy STY, and I'm feeling pretty much DONE with the rain business for a while. And what's in the forecast all weekend while my darling husband is in Seattle? Yeah. Rain.
And the worst of it is that my loyal trusty hound Floyd is on his last legs. He had a seizure the other night, and had I not had dogs with seizures before, I would have been completely freaked out. He's never had one, and he had 3 of them over the course of the night and morning. He's now on 4 different medications and is stuck to me like glue. Poor guy isn't doing so well, and so we've decided when my husband gets back, we're going to have to have him put down. He's 13, he's a lab and has had a happy, long life. The worst of it though? Breaking the news to Hootie. She LOVES her dog, calls him "Boy" and I think will be devastated that he'll be gone from her little life. We've talked at great length and decided that we're not getting another dog right away. I love the dog, I've always had a dog. I'm sad that his time is coming to an end, and I'm saddest for Hootie who will really miss him. But I think I'm going to enjoy having some time where I don't have to care for a dog on top of everything else. My house will be and stay CLEAN for more than 2 hours at a time. I won't have a muddy laundry room. I won't have panting and pacing and barking in the night, waking me to go outside. I won't have chewing, I won't have shedding everywhere. I won't have to pay a kennel to keep him while we go out of town, or worse, take him with and deal with caring for him in someone else's home. I know at some point we'll likely get Hootie another dog. One that doesn't shed and I can pick up myself, and so on and so forth. But I need to take a breath first before I do that.
So now, it's off to get some things ready for the maid to come.

Happiness Is....

2007-03-17T07:11:00.000-06:00

A fluffy kitty sleeping on a porch swing on a warm spring day?

The sound of children laughing and playing?

Found at the bottom of a bottle of beer?

I've been trying to dissect this question lately, in an effort to grasp what it is, because I see it missing so often.

According to wikipedia, which appears to be the new middle school reference location of choice, "Happiness is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history. This reflects the universal importance that humans place on happiness.... States associated with happiness include well-being, delight, health, safety, contentment, and love. Contrasting states include suffering, depression, grief, anxiety, and pain. Happiness is often associated with the presence of favorable circumstances such as a supportive family life, a loving marriage, and economic stability. Unfavorable circumstances, such as abusive relationships, accidents, loss of employment, and conflicts, diminish the amount of happiness a person experiences. However, according to several ancient and modern thinkers, happiness is influenced by the attitude and perspective taken on such circumstances."

I was reading right along, kind of feeling like it was all so superficial, not agreeing much, all up until I got to the last sentence. "...influenced by the attitude and perspective taken on such circumstances." YES. That is the closest description of what I perceive as happiness as I have been able to find.

If Happiness were the thing which resulted from a state of economic stability, supportive family life, loving marriage, my brother in law and my birth mother would both be happy individuals. But they aren't. My mother evidently suffers a chemical imbalance which skews her perspective on her life. Even with chemical assistance, she's generally speaking unhappy. But not directly about anything in particular. My brother in law chose a very harmful addiction to drown out his apparent unhappiness and what I think is depression, despite being in a marriage with someone who loves him dearly, having beautiful children, working a good-paying job with reasonable work/life balance, and hobbies on the side which purportedly resulted in personal fulfillment. Yet, he claims he was not happy either. WHY? We all know of people that live in big houses, are drowning in money, and have from the outside looking in, fabulous lives. Lots of interesting experiences, beautiful children, lovely spouses. Of course we never know what is going on in those relationships, but a lot of people have a shell of prosperity and are hollow inside.

There was a time when my dear friends Ross and Shonna had very little money. They lived in a small rented house, went to school and/or had various low-paying jobs, shared one vehicle, and times were "tough" financially. But they have solid families, they have each other, and they were both happy people. I've met others who are also happy in the face of quite a bit of adversity in their lives, including horrendous early family life situations which resulted in a good deal of emotional scarring. Yet they have pulled themselves up and out of that pit and found happiness within themselves.

THAT is more what I think it is. Finding happiness within oneself. As in, NOT dependent upon what someone else does or doesn't do, not dependent upon anything outside of oneself. Not so terribly easy to do, and I'm sure with huge life obstacles, even harder. Especially if one has been conditioned to only find fleeting happiness within all of the things surrounding us in the world. Relationships, material goods, activities, homes. Not to say that these things cannot significantly augment our appreciation and enjoyment of our lives - definitely this is the case. But to lay the burden of one's personal fulfillment and happiness at the feet of any or all of these things is asking for disappointment and a rollercoaster. Especially relationships - these things are unpredictable, because they involve the heart and soul of other people. To expect another person bear the burden of making me happy is unfair. The person who needs to make me happy is me. I cannot look to my husband to make me happy, nor can I sit and blame him if I am unhappy. He can do things which displease me, but how I choose to respond to those things is my doing. I can find helpful and positive ways to respond, and/or I can find ways to alleviate things which are problems in my life or even our life together. But I certainly will not give another person the power to render me unhappy. If I don't like something, it's up to me to change it or accept it. From a Buddhist perspective, I think the term is equanimity. Being basically ok in the face of whatever life throws us. Being almost neutral to it. I don't want to suggest that being this emotionless zombie is a good idea, or that I have to find a way to accept abuse in my life. But the direction of decoupling one's happiness from things external to us is of key importance.

I know for some, and partially for me, happiness can be found in communion with God. Going to church? Well, I'm sure that can be part of it, but I don't know that it magically just happens by sitting in a church building with a bunch of other people, singing songs and listening to words of wisdom from the pulpit. I think the intention is critical. Why does one go to church? To seek God? To seek communion with others? I can seek God in all the miracles I see on Earth, without sitting in a church. I can seek communion with others without sitting in a church building. In fact, I find it better outside of church, as I don't actually end up interacting on any meaningful level with people in the church building. But that's been my experience - I don't condemn it for those who find what they need there. For me, the purpose of seeking God has been to understand something greater than myself, the creator of me and everything around me. To accept the way I was created as perfect and intentional. To understand the mystery of life, and I don't mean MY life. I mean the difference between a thing being alive and being the same set of elements and matter, but not being alive. I don't think God is up there orchestrating everything we do down here. Free will for everyone lies in direct conflict with Him making us do or not do things. Yet there are elements of life on earth which are not a direct effect of a person's free will, and I do think He finds ways to impact those things, and ways to guide a person to lessons we can learn. But in essence, I think actual happiness comes from accepting that I am an accumulation of what He started out giving me, and what I have done with myself. And it's a heavy responsibility, owning what I have DONE with myself from the time of my birth. But it's an important key to owning my own happiness. The more I can grasp that I am what I make of myself, and my life is what I make of it (and what I appreciate of it), the happier I can actually be.

So how does one go about doing that, BEING happy, if one doesn't have it already? I think if I really had a good formula for that, I'd be a wealthy woman. There's a lot I don't know about what causes depression in people, but I suspect there's a combination of chemicals, life circumstances, and learned behavior at play. So between medication for the chemical issues and deconstructing one's mental framework and rebuilding it in a healthy way, there has to be a solution in there somewhere.

But for me anyway, it has come from a lot of time spent learning and accepting who I am, finding pieces of me that don't fit who I want to be, and having the personal strength to walk alone through the process of changing those things. Changing behavior patterns which are destructive isn't easy, and requires a lot of focus and strength. But in the end, it has led me to be a person who can truly say she's happy with who she is, who has taken responsibility for who she is, and is happy with life. There are clearly moments which cause me frustration, events which cause sadness or anxiety, or areas which are unpleasant to deal with, but those don't affect my overall state of happiness. They come and go like the tide, get dealt with and I move on from them. I don't seek to avoid the troubles that come, I try and face them head-on, and get through them, fully experiencing the emotion of the moment, good or bad, and then learn something from it. I try to accept people in all their failings and humanity for the good that is in them, and encourage them to be the best people they can be too. Am I done with myself? Have I "achieved" the pinnacle of happiness? I'm sure not. I know there are still more things going on inside me that need to be addressed, and as they come up, I've no doubt that I will address them. My intention is not to sit in my ivory tower here, preaching to the masses. I'm more trying to find some way to bundle up the concept and share it with people who aren't happy, in an effort to help them see a way out of it. I don't even know if this is possible, sharing keys to happiness. I wonder sometimes if some people are just incapable of owning it and creating it within themselves. But if they aren't, that is just a sad statement. I don't think it takes nearly as much introspection and "making a mountain out of a molehill" as I have done at times in my life, but I think that's what's been necessary for me personally to get to where I am happy and know it. For people like my husband, I think it's a lot more natural.

Lack of Anything to Say

2007-03-07T10:24:00.000-06:00

I have no idea who even reads this blog, but if anyone has been checking, only to note I haven't said shit in the last few weeks, it's because I'm madly painting. Pictures. That I'm selling on eBay. To earn the money to buy a few pieces of furniture for the house which aren't in our budget this year. Like a couch, and an antique farm table that I'll hopefully find at the Round Top Antique Fair in a month. And then, maybe, later in the year, a bedframe for our king sized bed.
So if you wanted to see what I'm selling on eBay, type "TRASI" into the search window and it'll bring up all of my pieces. I actually sold one for $43 last night. Very exciting.

Regrets?

2007-03-01T08:20:00.000-06:00

As is usually the case with me lately, I am inspired by something else I read and am going to post a discussion about it myself. Heather (who writes Dooce) posted regarding regrets. It's a topic I have mulled over a lot in my life. Over time, I have developed an aversion to the concept of regrets. Life gives us a lot of opportunities to make good or bad decisions, and at the time, most of us do our best to try and make good ones, based on the information we had at the time. These decisions cut a path for us through our own timeline, setting a course that carves our personalities and shapes our understanding of the world. Those decisions, good and bad, are all valuable in their own right, for the lessons we learn, the people we meet, and the experiences we gather. So there isn't much I regret, because it brought me where I am today. But then again, I haven't ever made any "turning point" types of decisions or mistakes which have had such a bad effect that I would want to undo it to spare someone pain or undo some grossly disastrous wrong.
Even so, there are a few regrets which stand out in my mind. Some end up unraveling, as I ponder the effect that could have had on my life, and some stand firm.
As a high schooler, I was offered the opportunity to study before and after school with my art teacher, in order to better prepare me to go to art school. Like Kansas, or Chicago. SERIOUS FUCKING ART SCHOOL. It was put to me as a decision - either I was willing to put in the effort and work my ass off to get in and succeed, or my art teacher wasn't going to put in the extra time with me. It was a HUGE compliment to my talent, and something I took my time thinking about before deciding. I talked to my parents about it at the time. I was SSSSOOOOO tempted, because art is in my soul and it feeds my soul a LOT. But, in the end, I decided not to go to art school. I thought then (which was true then, may still be true now) that the only time my art was really brilliant, rather than just capable, was when some wretched sort of emotion came out of me. Angst, anger, sadness, fear, frustration, loneliness. And the rest of the time, if I forced art to come out of me, I wasn't really satisfied with it. I was afraid of becoming a "starving artist", depending upon brief bits of misery to create something that would pay the rent. And usually the brilliant pieces that came out of me weren't part of an "assignment", the way most artists are given assignments for their jobs. The thought of just painting and selling my pieces never occurred to me; most artists I knew of never were famous until they were dead. Um.... NOT APPEALING! So I chose to study languages instead. That was something else that I was not only good at, but also didn't depend upon my mood. However, I can't say that I actually regret this decision. It all leads to the path of where I am now, and I like where I am now. I wouldn't be married to the man I'm married to, because I met him through a friend I made in Russian class. I wouldn't likely even be in Austin, now. And clearly, I wouldn't have my beautiful Hootie. So no, I don't regret it. But I can say that I could have done it, had I decided otherwise. That, or med school, another thought that occurred to me in hindsight. Not that I had any idea I would maybe have been good at that, but later in life I have discovered an affinity for that which never occurred to me back then. And, had I done that, I would have also missed out on a great many trips to Europe and other parts of the world that have so enriched my life. SO, no regrets.
I also could regret that I spend SO MUCH time wrapped up in trying to please other people, worrying about what they think. There's definitely a balance to be achieved, though. I don't know that I have it down yet, but it is in the hopper, so to speak. I don't want to be this hapless narcissist who is only out to please herself, but I know that a lot of my life I have spent making decisions and behaving in a way that I envision would be likeable and smart and savvy. I didn't really even consider really just marching to the beat of my own drummer, because heck, I didn't think my drummer was very cool, and didn't trust him anyway. These things are changing, especially in the last 7 years. But who is to say when a person ought to be learning this? Many people never learn it, and either go on in their self-absorbed way, or become a doormat/martyr for the people they want to impress or please.
But there are some little regrets I do have, which I know wouldn't have changed my life course at all. Like, for example, the decision to not stay in Austin on our wedding night, and go to the big ass party all our friends threw in our honor. We didn't have a lot of money, and my inlaws paid for the tickets to get us to Colorado for our honeymoon. The ones they chose, however, were red-eye flights the next morning, out of Dallas, and the only way we could get there on time for the flight was to fly out of Austin at 7pm the night of our wedding. So, we had a 2pm wedding, and what amounts to a "tea and buffet" mid-afternoon, and we flew to Dallas. To stay in a BORING hotel next to the airport. Which, for a wedding night, was less than fantastic. I would have loved to have stayed, sucked up paying for more expensive tickets, and had a great time with our friends, because isn't that what it's all about anyway? As I look back at the wedding itself, I still love a lot about it. Just not that part. AND, I would have served alcohol at the wedding. We didn't because there was a friend or two we thought would get rip-roaring drunk, and make an ass of himself at the wedding. Well what wedding is complete without a drunk friend, I ask?!? I was too uptight back then. Seriously!
I'll also borrow from Dooce, in that her only regret was not wearing more sunscreen. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will end up dealing with skin cancer at some point in my life, especially on my face, because of having gotten so much sunburn in my life. I have always liked to have a light tan in the summer, and many years had a nice dark tan. We always thought that was so attractive. It ain't gonna be so attractive when I have scars from having stuff cut off my face and arms and chest and back someday. I'm much more into sunscreen, ESPECIALLY for Hootie. I don't even want to instill in her that having a tan is something worth seeking. If you get some color from being outside, and it happens slowly and naturally with a LOT of sunscreen on, then that's just living your life. But I BATHED IN BABY OIL as a teenager, to get a darker tan. HOLY SHIT, HOW STUPID IS THAT?!? My uncle just died from melanoma, from a spot on his back that had been there forever, which likely turned to melanoma in part from sun exposure. This is the generation that needs to make a change in culture about the sun. And really, it's a woman thing, I think. I don't see men worrying about it nearly as much as women do.
But really, that is it. I don't think I've been purposefully mean to people in my life. And over time, I have learned a lot of good lessons from the various mistakes I've made. But I've also been very lucky, in that I haven't really made that many mistakes, and the ones I have made haven't had that many heinous consequences. Maybe if something I did had led to someone being severely hurt by me, then I'd regret it. But luckily, that's never happened to me. KNOCK ON WOOD it never does. The saddest part of reading Dooce's post was reading the comments of people who have some seriously bad regrets, like regretting giving up a child, or regretting not seeing their parents before they died, stuff they can't undo and will wish they had for the rest of their lives. I try my best to think through the decisions I make so that I don't have to wish things were different.

Self Esteem

2007-02-21T09:42:00.000-06:00

Recently I have been going through a coaching exercise as a sort of trial for a friend-of-a-friend. J is learning to be a coach for a program in Montana, whereby people from the business world come in and learn about leadership during a work retreat, involving horses. What I am doing has nothing to do with horses, but in a way has a lot to do with the same concepts a person learns in leadership training. J needs to practice with her tools and techniques prior to being able to finish her training, and I'm a guinea pig for that. Since I'm already grossly introspective anyway, I probably make a really EASY candidate for this exercise... not much of a challenge for her, but probably give her the ability to use a lot of her tools!
It's been pretty enlightening for me also, in the way that counseling has been enlightening, the few times I have engaged in counseling in my lifetime. However, when I have gone through any counseling before, it was in response to some major issue going on in my life, and I don't feel I have any big pressing major issues right at the moment. Maybe that is a better time to sit back and reflect on oneself, though, because I'm not caught in the crossfire of the issue itself.
One big fat aha moment for me has been around the area of self esteem. As a child, when I lived in Iowa and befriended a girl with hearing aids, I was absolutely NOT a popular child. Like, dump-the-books unpopular, or turn-off-the-bathroom-light-on-her unpopular. I always figured it was because of my association with Erika, who was exponentially even more unpopular than I was, as she had the social skills of a rock (or one of those oddballs at a Star Trek convention). But even when I moved to Texas, I wasn't HUGELY popular. I had friends, quite good ones, and was well respected and never teased or tortured like I was in Iowa, but popular? Nope. And I grew to understand it was more a function of my looks than it was anything else. So, I became REALLY REALLY GOOD at a zillion things. Art. German. Other languages. Straight A's. And then eventually as I went to college and so on, the world broadened for me, and I met a wider range of people, once I was out of that microcosm where your looks and charm determine your likeablility. You know how it is in every high school in America - either you're gorgeous, you're a star athlete, or you're the class clown. The latter two not requiring the looks as much, but those sure help out.
So, I'm not what I'd consider grossly unattractive by any means. I'm just not a bombshell. I am well aware that I'm not pretty in the sense that the world finds people pretty. I'm also not interesting looking, in the way the world will still consider you attractive if you've got a quirky, funky look about you. I have the same nose all babies are born with - a pudgy little ball plopped on the middle of my face. I have no bridge to my nose, and my profile is just very flat. My smile is kinda funny, and my hair... well... let's just say it has never been my best feature. At age 37, it is amazing how much this STILL seems to play into my psyche and my self confidence. I know it shouldn't. At this point, it makes about zero difference in my world. I have tons of self confidence about a great many other areas of my life, but that one still remains a bit hamstrung. I didn't really even know it, because I have always considered myself a pretty confident, self-assured person. What I found out is that people will often overcompensate in one area, to make up for something they perceive themselves lacking. And that's me to a T. I just wasn't actively aware of it until recently. So my current self-project is to really focus on this area, and come to terms with exactly the way I look, and let it the fuck go. There's very little about it that I can change, and fundamentally, it doesn't matter. I don't need to overcompensate for it, I don't owe anyone anything extra because I'm not easy on the eyes and/or the funniest thing alive. It's a hair shirt, and I'm tired of having that feeling in the back of my mind. I'm not entirely sure how one goes about taking OFF said hairshirt, but I'm sure as hell going to try and figure it out.
Okay. That's all.

Exasperating.

2007-02-13T21:22:00.000-06:00

I've been swamped recently. Trying to get a million things done before Thursday, when I will finally hear from my orthopoedic doctor what the F is really going on in my shoulder. It's bothered me since Hootie was born, basically, since that timeframe in which she lived perched upon my right shoulder whilst I bounced endlessly, pacing and walking, keeping her from the interminable screaming which would take place, generally between about 3 pm and 4 am. At first I attributed it to her not caring for the BRIGHT, COLD place in which food doesn't come at a steady pace anymore, but eventually I settled in and let it be called colic. Four months (give or take, it sort of faded, rather than stopping abruptly) later, my shoulder would ache and occasionally I would feel a sharp pain when I put it in certain positions. I've consumed somewhere on the order of a shitload of ibuprofen since then, most days at least some. Some days none.
About 18 months ago I saw the doc, had an x-ray, and found out that I have calcific tendonitis, which is basically this chunk of hard calcium my body decided to place on my tendon where it experienced some tearing from overuse. Somehow my body got this signal to "fix" the problem. But what it does to fix it makes it worse. Now this chunk of calcium scrapes and shreds my muscles and other soft tissues when it comes in contact with them. Which hurts, of course.
I haven't ever been one who likes to sit around and belabor things which hurt. Let's drink Folgers coffee at the kitchen table, smoke a pack of Camel Unfiltereds, and talk about how we're getting older, falling apart, and did you know Preparation H is on sale at Walgreens? No foolin? Yeah. NOT.
So instead of bitching, I started doing yoga. And that helped me a lot, for a year, especially when it came to getting my range of motion back. I had gotten to where I was so careful with the arm, I stopped moving it very much, and that sucked. So the yoga got that back for me. And for a while, it didn't hurt as much either. But the more I progressed with yoga, the more I'd come home with a sore shoulder, take ibuprofen, and have to rest up for the next class. So now I'm back to being on the verge of bitching, and I made the commitment to myself I wouldn't do that. If it ever started to prevent me from doing something that I wanted to do, I would do something about it.
The doc tried cortisone, it didn't work. He said he could try again, but he knew he got it in the right spot, so didn't hold out much hope of it working the second time, so I skipped that round, left his office, and sucked it up until about a week ago. I went in again, told him it had gotten worse. He scheduled an MRI, which I endured last Friday, and now I'm waiting to go talk to him Thursday about the results. If my muscles are torn in the rotator cuff region, he wants to operate quickly. If not, I can wait until summer timeframe. But at this point, I am not sure I want to be waiting much longer, as it's really been bugging me more in the last few weeks.
In the meantime, I have project upon project lined up for me to complete. I just made a bookshelf this week (6' tall by 30" wide) with my friend Gene, for Hootie's bedroom. I need to sand and stain and seal it next. I want to redo an entire garden bed in my front yard with lavender, rather than English ivy, which is gonna take some shoulder to do it. I started painting and selling things on eBay (selling paintings, that is), and have been trying to figure out how to create a business for myself whilst I am at home, something I could do with my artistic side to pull in some G. In order to buy some furnishings for my house, which we've been needing for quite some time.In any case, I feel like I'm a bit under the gun, to get this done before I'm Gimpy the Sling Girl for 3 weeks, and "I can't do much with this floppy thing" for the following 5.
Productivity is a driving force in my life. I am not sure what I will do when I'm a "lame duck" for 2 months. Gah.
But HEY! I haven't had a sinus infection since Thanksgiving! Life is awesome!

Staying Connected

2007-02-06T21:11:00.000-06:00

I read a post on one of my favorite blogs today, sweetjuniper. For those who don't care to go read it (it's lengthy), the core story is that Dutch was in Generica (strip mall in suburb area) at a party store, when an old man came in looking for mylar balloons which commemorated his 60th wedding anniversary. He wanted to take them to his wife in a nursing home, who wouldn't really know the difference. He told his little story to the clerk who was disinterested and didn't interact with the old guy at all.
Most of the people on the post were noting how sad it must be for that little old guy, and how shitty these people were for not just reaching out and hugging the guy. Then there were the mom-and-pop store jihad folk, who wanted to say it's all because of Big Box America that clerks you talk to in stores don't give a shit about you or about their jobs. Some wanted to say, "hey, the kid's a teenager, cut him some slack". I tend to think those people are parents of teenagers, but whatever. There was some wistful hearkening back to the good ol' days of yore, when people cared about their customers, got to know them by name, gave good service.
But none of this was really the point of what Dutch was trying in there to say. Basically he was surprised that this little old guy even shared his story, because that's not how our current "society" typically interacts. It is how HIS society, back in his youthful days, did interact. People didn't have the internet to "talk" to each other. If you wanted to meet people, you went out on the town with your friends. You went to a dance, to a drive-in, to the soda fountain, or to church. You met people at the grocery. If you wanted to buy something, you went to the store to buy it. And you probably didn't have the 412 choices we have today. The guy selling it to you was knowledgeable about his "craft", whatever good or service he was in business to provide. Everything involved a lot more direct person-to-person interaction than we do today.
Why is that? Are we in love with convenience? Are we lazy? Are we a new breed of massive introverts? What is it that causes us as a society to withdraw so significantly from each other that we barely even have that which used to be called a community?
I take a look at myself - I'm a bit of an oxymoron in this vein. Yes, I'm introverted, but I'm not a hermit [crab]. But admittedly, my preferred method of communication back and forth with a good many friends is via email. It isn't that I don't like to talk - I talk to my mom and sister just about every day. But I like the fact that I can write something and check back later for an answer, rather than calling and leaving a voicemail, and waiting for a call back, or talking. I like face-to-face interactions better than the telephone or email, however, so I'm not hopeless. But the point wasn't lost on me that the concept of community is slowly eroding around us. That's sad. But more than it being sad, it's a call to action. If that isn't something that I want for our lives, if that's not something I want to pass on by way of example to my daughter, I need to behave differently to create a different experience. I am generally speaking polite and courteous when I'm out and about with people. Sometimes I can tend toward impatience when I'm around someone who is ignorant and blocking my way, but even then, I try and just talk myself down from it and let that go. But moreso than just not being rude in public, I think there's a stronger effort required to frequent the businesses in my neighborhood, develop even more relationships with people in my area, sit on my porch and play in the front yard with Hootie more. Talk to people as they go by. We're very lucky in that we live in a neighborhood where there are porches and sidewalks and neighborhood groceries and bakeries and wine shops and delis. In some of the more recently built neighborhoods, you rarely see people even outside. If they are, it's in their back yards, behind a 6-foot fence, guarding their privacy. People drive into their garages, close the door, enter their houses, and don't even interact with their neighbors at all. I don't want that, but instead of just saying I don't want that, I need to be responsible for not HAVING that. For going out there more, meeting more of the neighbors, being more involved, and being more open and responsive when other people open a line of communication with me.
I know my child is going to grow up with technology at her fingertips, but I hope and pray we manage to teach her that technology doesn't and shouldn't take the place of real, face-to-face human interaction. That's what emotionally feeds us. It isn't that we cannot also connect with these tools - I've gained a broader view by all of the insights and perspectives I read on the internet, and have developed some tentative e-relationships through that mechanism. But it certainly isn't my primary interaction mechanism, and shouldn't be.

Hope and Fear

2007-01-29T18:45:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I returned to my beloved yoga studio, that I have missed for 2 weeks while I was away. My instructor Keith (I only attend his sessions, not out of any dislike for the other instructors, but for a strong appreciation for his teaching style and the content of his practice) usually weaves some sort of concept into each practice, upon which to meditate or focus. Sometimes it is something as simple as slowing down, choosing to move very fluidly and purposefully between asanas and between thoughts. Increasing the distance between thoughts. Sometimes the ideas are more complex. The studio is a Buddhist yoga studio, which evidently differs from others in that Buddhist teachings exterior to the actual practice of yoga aren't necessarily woven throughout other yoga classes. Having been only to a class offered at a former workplace years ago, I wouldn't know. But I really have developed an appreciation for the works of poetry Keith works into the class as well as the philosophy he shares very humbly with us all. He does it in a way that lures you to chew on these questions in your mind long after the 90 minutes are over.
So on Sunday, on the board was written something to the effect of this: "Tension is what you think you should be. Relaxation is who you really are. Chinese proverb." And then at the beginning of class he shared a quote from an author who said, "The essence of happiness is this: fear nothing, hope nothing." Keith claimed it took him years before he could fully grasp the meaning of those statements, and come to see them as true. And that the absence of hope is not to be confused with pessimism. Because there's an absence of both fear and hope. This limbo place in the middle where basically you aren't married to the outcome of anything.
We're conditioned in our American environment to always have hope. To pray for what you want, to hope in your heart for the best outcome. But I think what Keith was getting at is that implicit inside hope is desire. And when you desire something you do not have, you set yourself up for disappointment and unhappiness if the outcome isn't in your favor. Inherent in that statement is the focus on the self, the "ego", which Buddhists work to eliminate in order to become one with each person's higher self. God, "Buddha Nature", Allah. So from what I understand, the intention is to be happy with whatever comes in life, to not expect or yearn for more than what it is, to experience it with wonder and curiosity and equanimity, fully without expectation. Everything is basically neutral, not good or bad. Attachment causes suffering, which is to be avoided in order to join in "bliss" with the higher self.
While I can definitely see the point of "fear nothing" and can work in my life toward that goal whole-heartedly, I have a hard time with "hope nothing". In fact, I think I have a hard time with living a life devoid of attachment. How does one stay connected to anyone, without a certain level of attachment? How do Buddhists define concrete relationships like marriage, without the concept of attachment? I understand the damage done by excess attachment, where you grasp at someone or something, often causing it to slip even further from our grasp. Love openly and you love without demands or possession. I'm all good with that. But even if we can imagine this state of being in which you are basically fine with whatever happens in life, birth, death, disease, and so on... not wishing or hoping for the best, just letting life unfold... it seems very void of the intense joys and sorrows to be experienced in life. Hope implies that you are fighting for an outcome. How does anyone with cancer actually beat it without hope? A lot of the point is to not fear death, to not see it as an "end" but rather as a transition. And therefore, not to cling to this life we are living here and now. But that would seem to mean you are neutral towards death, and aren't fighting against it. And I just can't take that stance. When I go, I'm sure I'll go kicking and screaming into the next phase, wanting to fully get as much of life and experience out of this one as is possible.
As a mother, I know that if my own life were ever in jeopardy, I damn well would fight like hell to stay on this earth, for no other reason than to be there for my child. Losing a parent at such a young age is devastating, and often can cause irreparable damage to a little one's psyche. While I know my daughter has a large number of people who love and cherish her to where she would never be without family and nurturing, I cannot imagine it would be as good as if her mother were there with her. Damn straight I'd fight to be here for her. And for my husband and family as well. When people die, it's not sad for them, they're moving on into the next phase. But for those of us left on earth to miss their presence, it leaves a hole and an ache. I don't think that I would want to be this stoic individual who remained so unattached to everyone and everything that they didn't feel the sense of loss in experiencing the remainder of their lives without their missing loved one. I am fully willing to go through the suffering and sadness of loss, in order to experience the abundant joys of rich, deep respectful attachments to other people in this world. Maybe I am missing something, or perhaps I am just delving into the bottom layer of this concept, for it can't be that simple, if it took Keith many years to grasp and embody it. I guess I'm just not there. May never be there. I think it is possible to hope for the best, and then deal with the reality. And I don't see the inherent "unhappiness" in doing so.

Drugs

2007-01-26T09:25:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I realize that this post is probably significantly controversial to a good many people who may read it. People seem polarized on the issue. But, it's my blog, so I will offer up the topic and anyone feel free to debate my points.

While I was up in Washington helping my mom (the second Mom, not the first one) after foot surgery, there were a few rough days in there. Hootie is in a very long 3-year-old phase of testing all the boundaries and I admittedly am not as consistent as I probably should be. I've got my head focusing on other areas for improvement right now, such as managing my irritation and frustration levels, and responding to those things appropriately. We were in a cold place, making it hard for Hootie to play outside for any length of time. I haven't really restocked the toys up there to suit her age, so most of them are still baby/toddler toys. On top of that, I was much less available to help direct her play and get her set up with arts and crafts and so forth, because of the time spent taking care of Mom and the house. Two days in a row, I tried getting Hootie out of the house for a few hours - over to my sister's house to play with her cousin Zakky, and once we took the kids together to the mall to play on their little indoor playscape. Both times, Mom ended up wanting or needing my help while I was gone, and became irritated that I wasn't there as I should be. The second time, I called and found her friend Susan there visiting, but Mom would not let Susan prepare her lunch. She waited for me to come back home to do that, bring it to her bedside, and then basically dismissed me and Hootie so she could visit with her friend. She wouldn't let Susan read Hootie stories or visit with me, she just wanted me to do my work and be gone. All of that set my mood to one where I felt I was between a rock and a hard place. Unable to please anyone in the situation. I was frustrated and stressed by it. This general frustration and stress lasted about two days and then Mom and I had a big discussion about it, and "cleared the air" so to speak. We discussed how Hootie is learning the "art of manipulation" and how I am not responding to it in a firm, authoritative way. I know we disagree on a few areas of child rearing, one of which is the use of corporal punishment - spanking and the like. It isn't that I do not believe in the use of a physical deterrent from some behaviors. In particular, I have used a "flick" of the lip when Hootie is grossly disrespectful to me, especially after repeated verbal warnings. But spanking her, which I have tried a few times, has had very little positive effect. I think it's good for things like teaching a toddler not to go in the street or not to touch a hot stove, etc. Or when they are throwing fits and disobeying direct requests or commands intentionally, after escalating warnings and consequences. But I believe in using consequences which somehow relate or tie to the misbehavior. Flicking her mouth tells her that she's being hurtful with her mouth, so her mouth will get "stung" by my flick. If she cannot share a toy, I will take it away so that nobody plays with it. If she cannot exhibit proper dining etiquette, she will sit in a time out in her room. And so on. This is just how I see it, and each parent makes up their own mind on these issues. It is each parent's perrogative to choose what they see as appropriate discipline to deter poor behaviors and guide their child. But it clearly bothers my mother that Hootie hasn't quit exhibiting these behaviors yet. And she doesn't agree with how I handle her. But for me, that is okay. I don't need permission or approval on that front. It'd be nice if my mom thought I did a good job with my child, but it's not critical that she approve. But, things went much smoother after that conversation. However, yesterday she told me that she thought she had mentioned (which she didn't), that maybe I should consider getting on some anti-depressant medications. That perhaps I need some help in managing my stress.
Anti-depressant medications have made a huge difference for many people that I know, and I am all in favor of them for these folks. My Mother in Nevada has been on them for years, and constantly struggles with getting the "balance" just right. However, without any medications, she'd be in a mental hospital or dead, I am sure. She's got a chemical imbalance which causes her to irrationally experience a lot of depression. My mom and sister both use anti-depressants, for different reasons. My mom's got a progressively debilitating disease which causes a lot of pain and stress and fear, and these drugs help her immeasurably. My sister has not explained a whole lot of what she experiences when she does not take medications which manage her depression, but I can definitely see what benefit they have for her, how they help her feel so much better. My friend Kathleen has taken two different medications for as long as I have known her, and she's also told me she needs them to even herself out - she's also been diagnosed with depression. So clearly, I am not against them at ALL.
But, I think there's a time and a place for them, and I don't believe that I fall into the category of needing them. I see it as either a temporary problem (a very close loved one dies - a spouse, a child, a parent, a sibling - which causes deep sadness and despair), or a chronic problem (like a chemical imbalance, making one prone to depressive thoughts). I don't feel I have either of these issues. Generally speaking, I am happy and content with my life. Of course I have adversity. Of course I have things which I work on to improve in myself. But I don't believe I fit any of the classic signs of depression. According to a website on signs of depression from the Mayo Clinic, the two hallmark signs to look out for are:
1. Loss of interest in normal daily activities; you lose interest in activities that you once used to enjoy
2. Depressed mood; You feel sad, helpless or hopeless, and may have crying spells.
Further, it goes on to note that for a doctor or clinician to diagnose depression, most of the following symptoms should be present for at least two weeks:
Sleep disturbances. Sleeping too much or having problems sleeping can be a sign you're depressed. Waking in the middle of the night or early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep are typical.
Impaired thinking or concentration. You may have trouble concentrating or making decisions and have problems with memory.
Changes in weight. An increased or reduced appetite and unexplained weight gain or loss may indicate depression.
Agitation. You may seem restless, agitated, irritable and easily annoyed.
Fatigue or slowing of body movements. You feel weariness and lack of energy nearly every day. You may feel as tired in the morning as you did when you went to bed the night before. You may feel like you're doing everything in slow motion, or you may speak in a slow, monotonous tone.
Low self-esteem. You feel worthless and have excessive guilt.
Less interest in sex. If you were sexually active before developing depression, you may notice a dramatic decrease in your level of interest in having sexual relations.
Thoughts of death. You have a persistent negative view of yourself, your situation and the future. You may have thoughts of death, dying or suicide.

The only symptoms in all of these which pertain to me are "agitation" (my frustration and ability to be easily irritated), and some level of fatigue. As was clearly proven to me at my mom's house, I am able to sleep all night if not interruped multiple times by a child or a dog, which is the case at home. I'm tired because I don't get uninterrupted sleep most nights. I'm easily irritated because I am tired. But none of the other things describe me at all. I get a lot of pleasure out of many things I do routinely - yoga, taking walks with my husband and daughter, cooking meals, cleaning my house and seeing it all tidy and cute, shopping, reading, visiting with friends. My self esteem is just fine, my interest in sex remains strong and unchanged, and the thought of death... well, I just don't ever think about that, unless I'm on an airplane and it's really turbulent, and I'm afraid. But I don't think that's what the Mayo Clinic is referring to.

Medication is appropriate when a person needs medication to solve a problem. When there aren't other ways to really solve them. I take ibuprofen multiple times a day to deal with the pain in my shoulder. I take allergy pills to combat my severe allergies to everything in this town. I do yoga and meditate and garden and spend some time alone to help calm and reenergize myself. And I think those things are appropriate ways for me to deal with stress and frustration. I'm a at a bit of a loss on how to deal with my dog waking me up at night, and we've been progressively working on the child so that she will sleep through the night in her own bed. But what I deal with is just life. Normal things in life.

No I Didn't Fall Off the Face of the Earth.

2007-01-25T21:51:00.000-06:00

Have been away, up in Washington, helping my Mom post-op. Just returned back to Austin last night. I missed a bad-ass ice storm, from what I hear (see attached pic of my roof! With ICICLES!)

So yeah. And I switched to Verizon, got a new phone (a Cherry Chocolate, which I like though I would have liked the Mint Chocolate more, had they had one in stock, which they didn't. And all efforts to exchange it for a Mint Chocolate in Washington were foiled due in the first part to my first Cherry Chocolate breaking, and in second part to me leaving the BLOODY BOX AT MY MOM'S HOUSE instead of bringing it with me to the store. DUH. Now it is probably too late, if they even have any at any store in Austin.) The husband bought me a 1MB card to put in the phone so I can download some music to it, and use it as a... well, it's not an IPOD, though the UI is frighteningly similar, and the format isn't MP3, so it isn't an MP3 player. I can use it to play music, OKAY? So I downloaded individual songs to it, and then I sat and relished in my song choices, and the songs I haven't listened to in quite some time, and so that was all fun.
I'm sure I'll have something to say here soon. I am rarely without something to say. Like maybe how my mom suggested perhaps I ought to think about anti-depressants to help me deal with stress and my 3-year-old. That went over like a fart in church. For a lot of reasons. Stay tuned.

Balancing Act

2007-01-12T11:31:00.000-06:00

So I have this dilemma.

My Mother (the one who raised me, not the one I'm going to see next week) has invited me and my family to come to Nevada for the holidays this year.

What to do about this?

My gut reaction to this invitation is unfortunately, "No thank you." In short, I do not wish to spend the holidays with them in Nevada. I would rather either spend time with them in Nevada another time of the year, or POSSIBLY spend a holiday with them in Austin. But even that isn't high on my list.

They left Austin two weeks after Hootie was born. They saw her twice as a newborn infant before they left. Once at the hospital, and once when I took her up to their house as they were preparing to pack up and leave. They have not been back to Austin since they moved to Nevada. They claim it is because they cannot afford it. Because they sunk their retirement income into a custom-built, beautiful house in a little golf community north of Las Vegas. They don't play golf. Or gamble. But they like this little town, and they like the lack of state income tax in Nevada. And they felt they had no other choices but to buy a home which continued to increase in price as it was being designed and built. They also have three dogs to board, should they leave town. So evidently, it's a big ordeal to go out of town.

I brought Hootie to their little house once, when she was almost 2. And my Mother saw her at a family funeral in Washington when she was about 9 months old, for a short time. So that's all they have seen of their granddaughter.

After a rather unpleasant exchange about holidays in mid-2005, wherein I explained that we already had made commitments for both Thanksgiving and Christmas that year, my mother tearfully claimed she felt like a bastard stepchild, unimportant and left out, and would I EVER spend holidays with them? I suggested they come to visit between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and we could celebrate a joint holiday and go to festivals and see lights and what-not, but this wasn't received well. If it isn't THE day of the holiday, it isn't worth anything, evidently. I eventually conceded out of pity, and said that the Thanksgiving of 2006, the following year, this past year, was free, and we'd love to have them come visit in Austin. I reiterated my invitation multiple times throughout the year, only to be told they hadn't discussed it yet, and maybe, maybe not. I even reserved the little guesthouse across the street which I manage, in case they decided to come. Throughout the year, whenever I would inquire about it, they blew me off, didn't really respond to my invitation, and of course, did not come.

Further information pertaining to this dilemma resides in my earlier post regarding why I have two mothers, and the state of the relationship with my parents. Holidays with a bipolar individual are not usually easy. My mother's medications are not consistent in their effectiveness, and I've spent many a holiday with her where she's miserable to be around. Sometimes not, but it's a crapshoot. Add to it the fact that there's little to do in this little town in Nevada, and my parents are pretty sedentary, and we haven't got terribly much to discuss as it is. We couldn't find an open playground anywhere in this little town, only the one attached to the school, which was fenced off from the public. My parents have nothing which accommodates a child, and the town has even less, considering it's really a retirement community of sorts. The thought of spending my holiday there doesn't appeal to me personally. If we were to go, it would be solely out of a sense of sadness that these two people are alone in Nevada, with no other children to celebrate the holidays with, and little initiative to make of it something special between the two of them. I realize that this situation is all of their own doing, yet I nevertheless feel sad for them that this is how it is.

As a married woman, I live that life where you go to one spouse's family's house for one of the holidays, and the other family for the next one, being Thanksgiving and Christmas. It rotates around and adjusts when the husband's sister is able to come to Texas and be with us for a specific holiday, so that we can all see her as well. So, when it's time for my family's "turn", I like to go to Washington. I like to see my Mama and sister and her family. Hootie loves to play with her cousins, we get to play in the snow and possibly go skiing, everyone laughs and plays poker and watches football and has a lot of holiday cheer going around. It's FUN. So, to give that up to assuage any sense of guilt or burden of responsibility toward the people who raised me... it just isn't appealing.

Believe me, in having been an only child and having one live in my home, I have put a good deal of thought into how I am going to raise her and treat her, such that she doesn't inherit the same pitfalls of only childhood which I have had over the years. I know that I am "lucky" not to have depression or bipolar disorder, and that I am also very blessed to be a self-sufficient individual. We plan to travel and invite Hootie to join us if she so chooses, during holidays. I think the idea of spending a Christmas with just my husband sounds lovely anyway. But I don't want Hootie to face that same sense of pressure to "entertain" her parents, or to make us feel loved or give us reason for being.

So how did I respond? Well, I told my Mother via email that I appreciated her offer, but we would not be able to come for either Thanksgiving or Christmas. However, if she wanted us to come for one of their birthdays, or in between the holidays, or some other time, we could possibly arrange that. I have yet to hear back, but I'm anticipating another long, unpleasant silent treatment initiated by my ghastly selfishness.

I don't know what I want or expect from this post, other than just to get it out of me. Thanks for reading.

First Bicycle, Learning to Ride

2007-01-11T16:07:00.000-06:00

Some might say that perhaps 3 is too young for a first bicycle, that Hootie ought to be riding a tricycle at this point. Well, PAH, on that. Although the little red flyer tricycle is cute, it is "vintage", is is nostalgic... it isn't Hootie's forte. The diameter of the pedaling circle is so bloody small, it takes MUCH more force to even make the pedals GO, let alone keep pedaling. And it's high up, easily tipping over. She does MUCH better on a bicycle, IMHO. I'm sure the training wheels will be on it for some time, but that's okay. I am dreaming in my head of the day when we can actually all head out on our own bicycles for a family ride. I so remember the beautiful days when the husband and I would hop on the bikes, head downtown, weave through the lovely old buildings and shops and coffeehouses, down to Town Lake, where we would head east toward the little-used section of the lake, past the Holly Street Power Plant, over the bridge at Pleasant Valley, through the parks and back around to the populated section where the joggers and walkers and bikers and dogs and kids all were, creating our obstacle course through to Zilker Park and back around to the downtown area. We'd stop at the Cedar Door for a Mexican Martini and some pubgrub, and head back up toward the house, a little bit wobbly from a long ride and a nice, relaxing margarita. Haven't done that in about 4 1/2 years, sadly. And the child hasn't come along in a baby carrier because a) the husband doesn't like the safety of the bike-mounted carriers, and b) the husband also doesn't like the idea of dragging a child trailer behind the bicycle through downtown. So when the day comes that Hootie's old enough to go do that with us, HALLELUJAH! I will be THRILLED. Usually the initial riding of a bicycle brings on feelings in a mother akin to, "Oh, my little BABY is growing up, she's not a baby anymore!" and all that. I have PLENTY of other things that trigger THAT response, thanks. Bicycling? That will be a delight!

It's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

2007-01-07T12:43:00.000-06:00

It's stunningly beautiful outside, about 60 degrees and clear and dry. One of the days I dream about all summer when it's 98 and sweltering and humid. We took a lovely walk down on Town Lake this morning and I took a few pictures:

Nothing exciting to report on a Sunday afternoon, just posting pics.

Elaine in Training

2007-01-04T08:24:00.001-06:00

This is Hootie, dancing to Shonna's boss Nick playing piano at their party in Driftwood.

Happy 2007!

2007-01-01T08:40:00.000-06:00

This was us, out last night for a delicious dinner with good friends. Happy New Year to everyone!

Refining My List - IDEALS for 2007

2006-12-31T16:36:00.000-06:00

So a while ago, earlier this month, I wrote a post about ideals worth sacrificing for. I have talked with close friends and family about this to a certain degree, and am further refining my list to those things which are most on my list to work on, plus things I didn't list previously. So some adds, some outs, and now we have a list, on this beautiful last day of 2006. And I like to review the substance of the year, just because it is cathartic to me. I have had a good year, and feel very lucky in that regard. We did a fair bit of traveling - to Washington (east and west, multiple times) as well as San Francisco, Florida, and Colorado. Plus within the state, to Houston and Dallas and Wichita Falls to visit family and friends. All trips were terrific. I gained a new nephew, Samuel, took up a life-changing endeavor in yoga, we remodeled our kitchen primarily ourselves. I managed a little guesthouse across the road, began helping a friend get up to speed on new technology for her office to go wireless and paperless, and got my daughter's bed switched to a big girl bed. I painted some watercolor paintings, crocheted some blankets, did some sewing, made some jewelry, and did some gardening. I got a tattoo, finally, after thinking and planning and talking about it for a zillion years. We lost some very good neighbor friends as they moved to Portland, and grew closer to some other friends. I don't know that I necessarily made any *new* friends this year, but I definitely feel like I've developed some of my friendships more than I had in the past (especially Melissa, HI MISSY!). I've been working hard on being more calm, reducing my level of frustration and irritation, and responding a lot more peacefully to things that previously would elicit a haughty irritated response, as though I should not have to deal with irritation. It isn't that I don't still feel the irritation, or that I try to squash it. But I'm learning to let it exist, yet not act on it or respond to it.
This year hasn't been the best for some of the folks close to me. My heart goes out to each of them, with prayers for a better year in 2007. I, for one, am thankful this one was good to me, and hope the next is as well. And here's what I'm working on.

1. Recycling - much more than in the past
2. Organic foods - where it makes sense
3. Buying local/American/fair-trade foreign goods
4. Continuing my yoga practice 2-3 times weekly
5. Allowing myself to be imperfect, realizing that within me is my perfect self, but I can only remove the clutter to find that if I am patient and loving of myself in the process.
6. Being in the present. Being mindful and experience each moment for what it has to offer. Not goody-goody "stop and smell the flowers" or "enjoy each moment" - because a lot of it isn't very fun. But wisdom comes from mindfully enduring difficulty and frustration and pain as much as appreciating the beauty in life. I haven't been very mindful, always living in my head, rehashing or reexperiencing the past, or looking forward to something in the future. I need to do much more of this, just being in the moment itself, for whatever it brings. Especially with Hootie.
7. Living simply. This means everything from continuing my efforts to reduce the amount of clutter in my home to uncomplicating my relationships, to letting people have their own emotions without taking them personally, to how I entertain my child. The most difficult part of that is that I have been given a lot of lovely things, which I would feel bad parting with because of the loved ones who have given them to me.
8. PAINT MORE. I need to do a lot more art.
9. Spend money on travel and experiences rather than things. I think I might allow myself a few indulgences though. Photographs, beautiful food, and I think I'm going to have to go with shoes. Not overboard, just indulging my weakness now and again.
10. LOVE MORE. We all could stand a little more of that, eh? "All we need is love, da ta da da da..."

Now I am going to go put on a sexy black dress and heels, and accompany my husband and friends out to a nice New Year's Eve dinner sans child. Happy New Year to everyone who is reading, and much health and happiness to all.

So Yeah, About Christmas.

2006-12-29T21:35:00.000-06:00

We've returned from Houston, where we spent Christmas with the husband's delightful family. Let me just say, I know there are a lot of poor, sad women out there who hate their in-laws, especially their mothers-in-law. I would not be one of those people. And she wouldn't be a daughter-in-law hater either. We really had a terrific time with them. The only complaints I can make are that I got extra fattened up by all of the delicious food (for which I have to take some responsibility, making two Dutch apple pies and a shitload of cookies AND the turkey gravy), and our sleeping situation sent the child into another, YES ANOTHER, tailspin. We were in a room with two single beds, and the child was on the floor. Had we ALL wanted to hear her howling in the night, we could have forced her to sleep in what was once her little crib, now turned "toddler bed" in the little room next to the husband's parents' bedroom, but I felt I couldn't really subject everyone to that. So we put her on a palette in our bedroom, on the floor next to my twin bed. Sleeping on a floor never hurt me as a child, so there's no "pity poor Hootie" going on with that situation. The problem was that Hootie was allowed the much-desired sleeping proximity to her mother. Which resulted the last three days in me ending up SHARING my SKINNY LITTLE TWIN BED with her land-grabbing, horizontal-laying butt. MUCH TO HER TOTAL GLEE. So, as is the case when we return home, it was back to the routine. Last night was straight from hell, with the whining and cajoling and the "MOMMY!" (repeat for TWO HOURS, interspersed with other dialogue and requests, some of which were legitimate, some of which were pure 3.5 year old bullshit). We like to say in our household that the child's inner monologue is being broadcast because someone left the mike on in her head. Read on. I don't make this shit up. Our room is adjacent to hers and we're lying there, me reading Buddhism for Mothers and my husband with his laptop on his belly, reading either www.DarkHorizons.com (yes, this gags me out) or maybe some news site or something. She's bellowing "Mommy" ad nauseum, which we are ignoring, since we've already addressed bathroom needs, drink of water needs, please can you adjust my pink blanket so that it is silky side down needs, and I dropped my Glowy Stick needs, I'm NOT KIDDING. Then, a slight pause. Is she giving up? No, there's a mumble (or what SHOULD be inaudible mumbling, but comes out as FULL FLEDGED TALKING), "I don't think Mommy can hear me. Maybe if I say it really LOUD, she'll wake up and come in here to me. Okay. Here I go. 1....2....3..... MOMMY!!!!"

Are you fucking kidding me?

Yep, that is what my child said. Followed up with stuff like, "She's not COMING. Maybe I wasn't loud enough. I'll try it again. 1....2....3....MMMOOOOOMMMMMMYYYYYY!!!" (and other wonderment that this strategy is not, in fact, working). This did go on for two hours. I went to the front bedroom to sleep. I COULD STILL HEAR HER WITH ALL THREE DOORS BETWEEN US CLOSED. AND the computer was on, humming its obnoxious hum.

So, the sleep thing, it begins again, anew, afresh. For the 734th time. Delightful.

But the Christmas and festivities and games and conversation were all terrific. And, much to my own chagrin for having thought otherwise in advance, my daughter enjoyed going to see the Nutcracker Ballet. I personally thought there'd be no way a 3 1/2 year old would even GET the Nutcracker, much less sit for three hours on my lap ENRAPT as I narrated the story for her. But she did. It wasn't even so much as saying that she was well behaved, or that she "did well" or anything, as though her presence was an unfortunate side-deterrent to enjoying the ballet, or as though we had no option but to bring her with, and could we just get through it without a tantrum? She ENJOYED it, was actively watching it, probably moreso than many others in the audience. Of course she won't remember that when she grows up, but for the time being, for being 3 1/2 years old, she got as much out of a visit to the Nutcracker Ballet as anyone at that stage of life could. And I'm glad that we went, treated by the husband's sister and brother-in-law. It was remarkable.

We also went out to see our friends play in a band. Not a "current" band, mind you. A band that was actually a real band when we were in college in the early 90s. A band which sings songs primarily about food, about strange and wistful relationships, and about broken down cars. All original music. A band whose music is incredibly catchy and Texas Rock. They are called Banana Blender Surprise and their music is fantastic, and they only get together and play a few gigs a year, usually around Christmas, when people gather in Houston to see their family over the holidays. We danced like we were 23 again, and had a terrific time. All these 30-somethings, acting like we know what's up, taking our kids to the family show from 4-6 before tucking them into their beds with their grandparents and going out to rock the house again at 10. We stayed out until 2, drank lots of beer, sweated through our smoke-infested clothes and remembered the good ol days when we'd go every Tuesday night to the Black Cat Lounge and watch them play. FANTASTIC, it was. But, that said, I'm glad I'm going to bed tonight at 10. Wait. That's one minute from now. G'Nite.

Happy Birthday To Me.

2006-12-29T11:19:00.000-06:00

I'm 37 today. The weather is rainy and dreary outside, though not "cold". It's going to have to be a "curly hair day" (any day where it's humid or raining is a curly hair day). I am not really satisfied with my weight, my shoulder is bothering me. I spent too much money over Christmas, though nothing that can't be overcome and corrected within a month. But that's about all the complaint I can muster! I'm happy with who I am, and with the directions I am taking in my life. I'm blessed with a wonderful husband, a daughter who amazes and awes me, a Mom who loves me dearly, a terrific sister, and a long list of special and interesting friends. I live in a fantastic neighborhood, in a cute little house, which is cozy and intimate. I have projects to work on, art supplies beckoning me, books to read, yoga to center me, and beauty to enjoy every day. All in all, I'm exactly where I want to be at age 37. Ten years ago I was embarking on a high tech career, drunk on the amount of money I was earning, WAY more than I had ever even fathomed. I was buying a brand new car for the first time in my life, and had very little introspection. Ten years later, just about NONE of that is true anymore. No career to speak of, living dependent upon a man, raising a child, still with that same car I bought 10 years ago (though the husband drives it now), and I'm extremely introspective. Do I feel 37? I don't know what it should feel like. I don't feel 18 anymore, and I don't feel "old" per se, so I guess I do feel 37. Do I look 37? Heck, I don't know. You tell me. Do I?

Thank You Gramma Tretsven

2006-12-24T20:53:00.000-06:00

In my family, my great grandmother Anna Bank Tretsven is a legend. She died when I was six or seven, while I was living in rural Iowa. I moved to Iowa at age 2, visited California one time, where she (and the rest of my extended family) lived, I think when I was four. I really don't have any memories of Gramma T herself but BOY do I know stories about her and her husband, Grampa T. But he's another story for another post.
Gramma T was the quintessential Grandma. A bit chubby, especially through the bosom, white short curly hair and glasses, a wide smile. Someone you buried yourself in when you scraped your knee or broke your heart. She had a breakfast nook with a built-in seat, and in the storage compartment below the seat were always brown paper sacks from the grocery, and an assortment of craftsy stuff (popsicle sticks, string, pom poms, pop bottle lids, markers, crayons, decals, and so on) to use to make masks on a dreary Saturday afternoon. Her four daughters and their families lived within this same block of property, onto which my great grandfather built little houses for each of them, and the connecting back yard was a playground for my mother, Mama, and their other 8 cousins. They would all run in and out of each others homes, with basically four mothers and a grandmother to keep them all in line. And, best of all, the most amazing stuff came out of her kitchen. I think her heritage was Danish, and Grampa T's was Norwegian. So many of the things the cooked had that flair - Ebelskiver (ball-shaped pancakes cooked in a special pan), pebber nooder (spice cookies at Christmas), rosettes (dainty fragile fried cookies dusted in powdered sugar), and so on. In any case, most all of us still know how to say the Norwegian grace before meals, and a few silly little ditties and songs associated with children. And Christmas. What we call "New Harvey Yuligan" (not spelled even REMOTELY correctly, I don't speak Norwegian or Danish) is a family tradition as well. If you can't sing New Harvey, you have to learn it and sing it BY YOURSELF in front of the entire family. A common family greeting at Christmas time is just "New Harvey", rather than "Merry Christmas!"
Gramma T was the one who could cook anything, and it was all traditional home-style cooking. Old fashioned everything. My Mama (not my birth mother) inherited her recipe box, which I raided with a new stack of recipe cards, painstakingly copying down recipes a few visits ago when I was up to visit Mama in Washington. I kinda wish I had the box itself though, with Gramma T's cards in it, as they have splots and smears of grease, spices, butter, and so on, from being on the counter when these dishes were prepared, hundreds of times over the years. I'm sure my Mama looks at them, with her handwriting, and gets a little frog in her throat thinking of her grandma making these things for her, from these very cards.
When I grew up, my mother did speak of some of the family traditions, and I knew a little about Gramma and Grampa T, but I learned the bulk of it from my Mama, once she came into my life. I certainly didn't learn anything about cooking Gramma T style from my mother, but have learned as much as I can since. My first great lesson was The Pie Shell. Evidently this isn't exactly the easiest thing to do and do well. My sister has gone through her share of attempts, cursing all the while, and I have had to do the same. The first time I tried making one, the air was BLUE with cursing, it cracked in about 5 places, wouldn't hold together and looked like crap. When I did finally piece it together in the pie dish, it was too thick, like a brick. The second time I tried to make it, I added too much water and it was hard as a rock, and not flaky at all, and tasted like I imagine homemade play doh to taste. The third time, I worked on getting it the right consistency, but subsequently have either gotten it too thick or too thin, and it just hasn't been easy or flaked just right. Most of the time, I feel Gramma T's little angel spirit staring over my shoulder, trying to calm me down and give me tips on what to do. "Don't TOUCH the dough, honey." "The water needs to be ICE cold, sweetheart." Or "Roll it from the center out, get the center nice and thin, not so much on the outsides!" Sometimes my own frustration gets the better of me and I haven't been able to listen to her.
At Thanksgiving, my Mama was here. She and I have been working to use a lot more whole wheat flour in our cooking, as it is healthier. But of course, that means I can't bake a bloody THING like my Gramma T, so I will make exceptions. As we learned, after trying the pie crust with whole wheat flour, it comes out like CRAP. I could even hear her saying, "Oh honey, you can't USE that for your pie shell. It won't stick together, and it won't taste good! You mark my words!" And she was right. It was a rock, tasted like cardboard, and I had to chunk out the entire first attempt while trying to roll it out in total vain. You aren't supposed to touch it with your hands, and if you do, it gets overly hard and won't roll out anyway, which is what happened. It fell apart, wasn't wet enough, required more water than the recipe calls for, and probably more shortening as well. So I just had to chunk it and start over. I finally made one that "worked" but it didn't really work. It was a dog.
So this Christmas, I was asked to make the Dutch apple pies for Christmas dinner tomorrow. I went back to the regular flour, I cut in the shortening first, then added the water slowly. It came together like a CHAMP. I just knew she was sitting on my shoulder, helping me put just the right amounts in, telling me when to stop with the pastry blender. And my Mama was on the other shoulder, going, "yep, that's right, Matilda, a little more rolling on the middle...". They look AWESOME. I am excited to taste them tomorrow.
I want Hootie to grow up remembering how GOOD her Mama's this and that always tasted, and I want her to be at her boyfriend's parents' house eating dinner one day, and she'll say to that mother, "My Mama makes THE BEST PIE, Ma'am!" and I'll just know it. I will feel that sentiment from wherever I am, and wherever she is, I'll know she's talking about me. I want to be that person like Gramma T, where she'll remember my hugs, and my songs at bedtime, the way I cook her favorite things for her when she feels tiny, and always iron her pillowcases and spray them with lavender spray every Monday morning when I change the bed linens, how I put out new little dishtowels every other day with embroidered or vintage patterns on them, how I do up her hair in pretty little styles, and play with her dollies and toys with her. I want her to always feel cozy about me, and when she's sick, she'll come home to me to get well. When she feels all sad and blue, she'll want to come be with me to cheer her up and help her feel better. She'll go away to college and long to come home for my pot roast or my pasta dishes, or my lasagna, or apple crisp. Or better yet, she'll want Gramma T's apple cookies, or nut bread, or her Moosie's dishes that I have learned to make. So every time I do something that Gramma T would have done, whether it be something taught to me by my Mama or something I know I have inherited from my family, I say a little thank you to Gramma T, though I didn't know her, for having been such a great pillar for our family to learn from.

The Zodiac, which I'm not into.

2006-12-20T21:08:00.000-06:00

I'm not one of those people who's into the zodiac at all. But once in a while I come upon a blurb about Capricorns, into which zodiac sign I fall, and I'm usually quite blown away by how FRIGGING RIGHT it seems to be. Are all people born in late Dec/most of January like me? Really? Can that actually be how it is?

Here's something I found online about Capricorns. I'm going to (just for GP here) highlight everything that is right about me in green, and everything that isn't right in red. Things which are partially right, they will be in yellow. I think even undertaking this exercise proves my point, as you will see.

Capricorn is one of the most stable and (mostly) serious of the zodiacal types. These independent, rocklike characters have many sterling qualities. They are normally confident, strong willed and calm.(not when I'm frustrated) These hardworking, unemotional (sometimes I am emotional or sensitive) shrewd, practical, responsible, persevering, and cautious to the extreme persons, are capable of persisting for as long as is necessary to accomplish a goal they have set for themselves. They are reliable workers in almost any profession they undertake. They are the major finishers of most projects started by the 'pioneering' signs; with firm stick-to-it-ness they quickly become the backbone of any company they work for.
Capricornians make of themselves, resourceful, determined managers; setting high standards for themselves and others. They strive always for honesty in their criticism of self, they respect discipline from above and demand it from those beneath them. In their methodical, tough, stubborn, unyielding way, they persist against personal hardship, putting their families and/or their work before their own needs and welfare to reach their objectives long after others have given up and fallen by the wayside. In fact when practical ability allied with the drive of ambition are required in employees to make a project succeed, Capricornians are the people to hire. They plan carefully to fulfill their ambitions (which often include becoming wealthy), they are economical without meanness (I don't think I'm particularly economical, look at my SHOPPING HABITS!), and able to achieve great results with minimum effort and expense. Because of their organizing ability they are able to work on several projects simultaneously.
They have a great respect for authority but may not, if they reach high rank, be willing to listen to other opinions on things they are directly responsible for. As the ranking authority figure in a given situation they expect their underlings to be as self disciplined as they themselves are, and to perform every task undertaken to the highest standard.
They are, nevertheless, fair as well as demanding. Among their equals they are not always the most pleasant of work fellows for they are reserved and too conservative, valuing tradition more than innovation, however valuable the latter, and they are often humorless. There is also a tendency to pessimism, melancholy and even unhappiness which many Capricornians are unable to keep to themselves, especially if they fail personally. In the extreme this trait can make them a very depressed individual; ecstatic happiness alternating with the most wretched kind of misery which is so subconsciously buried that he or she should seek help if such emotions become frequent. For the above reason, capable Capricorn should spend many hours in meditation, gathering the strength to control such inner emotions.
Their intellects are sometimes very subtle. They think profoundly and deeply, throughly exploring all possibilities before deciding on a 'safe' alternative. They have good memories and an insatiable yet methodical desire for knowledge. They are rational, logical and clearheaded, have good concentration, delight in debate in which they can show off their cleverness by luring their adversaries into traps and confounding them with logic.

So mostly, there's a lot going on in there which is how I am. I'm not particularly frugal, at least not relative to my husband. He's tighter than bark on a tree. We have no debt and are on our way to a decent retirement, but I don't exactly save all of our surplus in the budget each month. Between getting things for the house, garden, child, and clothing/shoes for me, it seems to dissolve rather rapidly. :-(
I would never consider myself pessimistic, unless you again compare me to my husband. I see myself as a realist. It it what it is. The glass has 4.2 oz in it. For him, it's always more than half full, and my doesn't it taste wonderful? but perhaps the water is just in the wrong sized glass.
The last little bit talks about this ecstatic happiness alternating with wretched misery - that sounds like bipolar disorder, and I know I don't have that. I am much more even keeled in the big picture. I have moments of frustration that I tie to lack of patience, which stems from lack of consistent, uninterrupted sleep and frequent sinus infections. But if you took that root cause out of the picture, or looked at me prior to having a child, you would see a very level-headed, stable, unemotional individual. I've been working on myself to become more emotional, or let more of the emotional side of me out. But especially in the business world, I'm NOT emotional at all.
But it is uncanny about many facets of this description, how it actually does suit me. I'm a do-er, I'm confident and productive and reliable and dependable and driven and ambitious. I get shit done, and I expect everyone else to do it with the same standards that I uphold. And though I know that isn't always right and I'm working on that too (add it to the frigging LIST), it's my nature to NOT understand how or why other people do a crappy job at things, half-assed.

It's A Phase. I FRIGGING HOPE IT IS!

2006-12-19T12:25:00.000-06:00

My child is 100% unable to SMILE LIKE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING. I know that having a snap-happy, camera-laden parent isn't really appealing for a child. I know that I feel like a "stage mom" every time I try to get the child to smile normally. And I can certainly blame my CRAPPY EQUIPMENT because we have an OLD digital camera, one with about a 10 second delay between pictures while it decides if it's "ready" to take another one, one with 3.2 megapixel hoo-ha. It's old, I know it. We need a new one. I can't get a lot of candids, because the MOMENT IS GONE before my camera can actually rev up to take the shot. But HONESTLY, the child cannot just smile normal. Here were my attempts at a Christmas picture today at her preschool party. FAILED MISERABLY.

Working Out Stuff About God

2006-12-18T12:39:00.000-06:00

The situation in my household is that my husband was raised Catholic, I was raised really "nothing." Our daughter will hopefully be exposed to a wide range of thoughts, but technically, she's Catholic. However, I'm the one, the "lost" one, who spends the most time thinking about this subject, and working out my thoughts and feelings on it.

My faith is of my own development. Possibly if you asked my parents, they would tell you they are Presbyterian because they were once members there; or Methodist, because my father's family claimed that denomination when he was raised; or even just generic Christian, since they have never attended church or practiced their spiritual side as long as I have been aware. Or my mother might not even tell you that she's Christian. I don't know that she even knows what she believes on that subject. My father believes he's Christian, has a set of values he upholds, and it's more the values I was taught, rather than any sense of "faith". But when I got into my 20's, I did some faith exploration of my own, starting from the premise of deciding whether or not I believed Christianity, rather than a blank sheet of paper with a list of the world's various religions on it. I went under the assumption that I wanted to practice Christianity, and then sort of tore at my questions about it with the help of some very, very good friends. That went on for a number of years. I don't know that I really got "answers" to my questions as much as I got a nice understanding of where I falter and what I am unclear about. I did a lot of learning though, which is a good place to start any exploration of a new subject matter. And that makes me feel better, though I know I'm no scholar.
My husband went to church with his family, was confirmed as a teenager, and will attend periodically throughout the year, though not regularly. His mother is Catholic, his father attends church but doesn't claim denomination or really make much comment about any of it. He recites the blessing at the table for mealtime, and he will attend church with his wife, I think mostly upon request or at holidays. The husband's sisters are mixed. I think one is agnostic (at least doesn't attend church of her own volition and wasn't married in a church), and the other has a very strong faith which is now practiced within a Protestant church setting. Point of all this is that the family is of mixed religious belief. My husband has a "quiet relationship" with God. He doesn't see a need to think about it, to explore it, to discuss it, or "work" on it. But he will only really attend a Catholic church, as I have discovered over the years, in an effort to maybe find something between Catholicism and whatever I am to suit us as a family. Our daughter was baptized Catholic, because I agreed upon marrying him (in the Catholic church) that I would not stand in the way of her learning about Catholicism. I don't have to teach it to her myself, and there is nothing to say I cannot expose her to other faiths as well. I just cannot prevent my husband from teaching her or indoctrinating her into the Catholic Church. Not that I want to either.
But, I cannot become Catholic. I have studied it, I have thought about it for YEARS. My mother-in-law and grandmother-in-law have invited me with open arms into the Catholic faith. I appreciate their invitations and have taken it extremely seriously. About 98% of it is fine, and in agreement with my views. But I honestly have some problems with it that keep me from being able to stand up in front of a congregation and affirm that I believe the same things they do. My MIL tells me that all Catholics have a few things here and there they disagree with, and that's okay. But I cannot do that, in good faith, disagree but say that I agree.
I have issues with the whole role the Pope has within the church, and what they believe to be true about the Pope. I have issues with his "infallibility" and we've seen throughout the course of history that many Popes have been very, very fallible. I have issues with the priest putting himself as a necessary participant in my communication with God. As though I cannot be forgiven directly, I cannot be in Communion with God unless I become Catholic, as though the human beings within the church know my heart, or could possibly know it well enough to decide if I can be in Communion with God, if I am forgiven when I ask for forgiveness.
However, I have a good friend who is Orthodox Christian. This faith is older than Catholicism - it was the schism between those two as a result of the political situation at the time in Europe/Eastern Europe which resulted in the position of the Pope being established, and after which the Nicene Creed was "altered" by the Pope at the time, changing a fundamental Orthodox tenet of doctrine. I learned a lot through my friend Brent about Orthodoxy, and did a good bit of reading about it. While its doctrine and rituals are very firm and inflexible, somehow I am able to stomach that more than I can Catholicism. I think if any denomination has a right to claim it is the original Christianity, it is Orthodoxy. If it is in any way critical that we follow what was originally Christian, I think Orthodoxy is the way to go. But that is one big fat question - is it critical we follow and practice our faith and worship the way it was done back then? The Orthodox believe it is, because they don't trust themselves to read the bible, interpret it, and know what to do. They cite the fact that everyone else who has done that on their own has come up with different interpretations and approaches and beliefs and doctrines. So therefore, it's not possible to "do it right" or consistently, anyway. So if we, as fallible human beings 2000 years after the fact, actually cannot read these multiply translated versions of the Bible, and understand what was really meant by those words, what are we to do? Can we get the translations right, and understand the context in which it was written, with such a drastically different culture and political situation from so long ago? Should we be taking everything that literally anyway? Those are my major open issues. If we really cannot do that, then I think Orthodoxy makes a lot of sense. The religious clergy never decide anything alone - everything is done in the context of a large group of scholarly, learned clergypeople, praying that if they can collectively agree on something, it must be due to divine wisdom being imparted on them. And the clergy are there to help their followers understand the Bible and know what God expects of them.
And, on the other hand, there's Buddhism. Having done a lot of thinking and participating in my yoga classes, I find this philosophy enlightening, and inspiring. I think it doesn't conflict with Christianity, but can go hand in hand. Buddha isn't "God". Buddha is the being inside each of us which joins with the higher power. That within us which is divine, our true selves. I see this marrying nicely with the idea that God created each of us exactly as we should be, and that we ought to seek union between our divine nature and God Himself.
So, on Sunday, I was in church with my husband, daughter, and his grandmother. A priest came to talk about how he came upon the priesthood as his true vocation, and how he feels about Catholicism specifically. It was very judgmental, very self-centered, in my opinion. I was so turned off. I do not know how I can be so turned off by a facet of Christianity, when one even stronger in their exclusivity (Orthodoxy) does not turn me off at all. Food for thought.

Cheers, Kristin!

2006-12-15T09:40:00.000-06:00

"What is it?" calls August.
"Did Clive feed the cats?"
His face appears in the crack of the flap. "Ah. Yes. Well, that presented a bit of difficulty, but I've worked something out."

The book is "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen.
A bit of an anti-climax, being exactly where it is that Kristin tells me to document. Here's what I did, upon request.

1. Grab the book closest to you.
2. Open to page 123, go down to the fifth sentence
3. Post the text of next 3 sentences on your blog
4. Name of the book and the author
5. Tag three people

That tagging part? Well, since so few people I know that read my blog actually have a blog to post on, that makes it kinda difficult. I will just have to say, HEY YOU THREE NEXT PEOPLE WHO READ MY BLOG AND HAVE A BLOG, comment in my comment section that you read it and are going to proceed with said request, eh? Thanks a bunch.

Crafty

2006-12-14T17:09:00.000-06:00

I haven't much shared the crafty stuff that I have done over the last few months, though that's what takes up a majority of my free time when I'm not engaged somehow with the preschooler. So I thought I would post a few pics of some of the things I have recently done.

Just yesterday, I decided that I would make Hootie a poncho out of fleece. Because I had seen these darling ones at www.skippinghippos.com but I cannot afford $50 for one. Not that they aren't worth that, just that I don't have that kind of money at this point. I am tapped out after Christmas, car maintenance, plane tickets for January, more Christmas gifts, blah blah blah. So, I went and got some fleece on sale, and bought a tassel and pom pom fringe and had some extra buttons lying around, and I still have this darling rose ribbon trim to add to the bottom of the poncho about 2" up from the pom pom fringe. But here is what it looks like:

So that's one thing. Other recent things include the following, which is a nap mat for Hootie to use at preschool. The back has an even crazier sort of paisley fabric on it, and the letters of her initials are felt. The fleece blanket, which is sewn in, is double the size of the mat itself, to wrap over and around her while she doesn't actually ever TAKE A NAP ANYMORE, DAMMIT:

In other craftiness, there's this, which is a mini-painting of a tree, in "Small Format", 2.5"x3.5" that I painted for my sister in law for her birthday:

I have done several others in this same style also.

Then, there's this little shirt that I "embellished". I didn't MAKE the shirt, I bought that. But then sewed felt circles onto the shirt, and then sewed a coordinating button inside each one. Hootie calls it her "fall shirt". Last year I did the red one below it...

I do a lot of crocheting also, but am not finished with those projects yet to include them. But that's a good selection of the random stuff I do. And, design my own tattoo. But you already knew that one.

Work In Progress

2006-12-11T16:03:00.000-06:00

Today I had lunch with my friend Kristi. Like it or not, Kristi and I have a lot of things in common. I say that bit about "like it or not" because what we mostly have in common are the parts of us which we don't so much care for. Easily irritated or frustrated (in her case, angry), self-critical, and we both struggle with what to do with ourselves as stay-at-home mothers. It's easy when you're the person listening to someone else ranting about something, to think yourself above (or at least distanced from) whatever they struggle with. But that's not the case with Kristi and myself, because a lot of the time, I can definitely relate. We both have lives that are wonderful - loving spouses, beautiful daughters, nice homes and extracurricular activities. What is there to be frustrated and irritated with? Fundamentally, the answer is really... nothing. What we both seem to have going on is an internal mechanism whereby we respond in automatic ways to the things which bother us, and those ways are unhealthy and counterproductive to effective communication with others in our family. So why do we respond this way? As Kristi was explaining earlier to me today, it's almost like a chemical process going on behind the scenes. The quick burst of irritation, frustration or anger releases some chemical that the body is accustomed to feeling, like the adrenaline that comes from fear or excitement. And so it seems we're both slowly trying to pick that response apart and reprogram ourselves to respond differently. So far the mechanisms that have been helping me have been yoga and getting more consistent sleep, and Kristi has been seeing an acupuncturist, chiropractor, and she rides her horse. And recently, has started reading a long list of recommended books to help her become a nicer, more patient and calm wife, mother, and person. In the interests of continual self improvement, I am going to be reading a number of the books she's had recommended to her as well, and am trying my darndest to improve my overall health. The frequent and recurring sinus infections I seem to struggle with (particularly at this time of year) have taken a huge toll on my ability to manage my own frustration level, as well as the ability to let things go which need no comment. To approach life with a sense of curiosity rather than expectation and disappointment. I spent a lot of years as an accomplishment junkie, getting my strokes from the work environment where I found ways to excel and accomplish tangible things. What I do now isn't terribly tangible, but it's the most important thing I could be doing right now, raising Hootie at home. I know that many mothers cannot stay home but would love to. I know many others who couldn't stand being at home, and choose to work so that the time they spend with their children is positive. You don't need a complicated advanced degree to be a stay-at-home-mother, but it's definitely not an easy job, if you put your heart into doing it well. And I, for one, am looking for a way to find all the satisfaction I need within the moment and what I am experiencing right now, without all that expectation hanging around my shoulders.

10 Ideals Worth Sacrificing For

2006-12-07T14:31:00.000-06:00

Every year like most of America (and probably people in other countries too, though I'm not so "in touch" with other cultures that I feel confident arguing on their behalf), I come up with a bullshit list of "resolutions" for the next year. I think about it for a few months leading up to New Year's Day, and once 1 January hits, I try real hard for about a month. Then, slowly, I slip back into my everyday habits. About the end of February, my conscience reminds me and I come screaming back to attention like you do when you're in a boring class and start to get the nap-jerks, and you wake back up only to draw ridiculous attention to yourself as you fling your pen across the room. But by late April, only a slight nagging thought wafts through the brain when faced with a thing I had intended to change and didn't follow through with. Months go by. But by October or November, my mind starts building up a new list of "resolutions." Well, this year I think I'm going to do something different. Instead of coming up with crap like that which only serves to make me feel like a loser when I fail at them, like diets and flossing every day and the like, I am creating a list of Ideals Worth Sacrificing For. These are all things which I believe in and know I achieve to one degree or another already. Things which ideally I would or could follow because the goal and purpose of these ideals are noble, worthwhile, and things I *want* to do, if only I weren't so lazy or cheap on occasion. Some of them I follow religiously, without issue. Others are a struggle; that which builds my character, so to speak. So I'm going to first explain what it is, why it's important (if explanation is needed), rate it with a star system as to how difficult it is to uphold (5 stars is WAY THE HELL HARD and 1 star is CAN DO IT WITH BOTH ARMS TIED BEHIND MY BACK AND A SPOON HANGING FROM MY NOSE), and explain WHY it's difficult to uphold, when it is. Concepts such as these, and one's ability to self-sacrifice and self-motivate in these areas, constitute what makes up a person, in my view (and what else is this but my little views anyway?! That's what I'm talkin' 'bout. Amen.) Let me know if I missed anything YOU think is important. Because after all, that's what the "COMMENTS" section is for - YOUR little views, your retaliations, additions, subtractions, yadda yadda.

1. Fidelity. (*)
Okay, everyone knows that this is important and why, in the context of a married relationship. But explanation is worthwhile here, because people define fidelity to one's partner in MANY different ways. I define it as a) you don't have any contact with another person which is in any way construed as "not platonic". You don't kiss someone else, and you certainly don't engage in any other sexually oriented acts with someone else. No paying for lap dances, no oral sex, no nothing like that. You may hug a friend of the opposite sex in a strictly friendly way, and you can flirt as long as it's clear to the other person you're not hitting on them and you're not INTERESTED in pursuing anything. You can look at other people naked without it being "cheating" (i.e. magazines, porn, or if you're dragged (as many people are) to a strip club for a bachelor/ette party) but not excessively, and not in lieu of whatever you should be getting from your spouse. Of course there are a zillion shades of gray on that, and too much of any of that is another kind of problem not meant for this post. And, (and this might be controversial to some), you cannot have a deep best-friend-level relationship that surpasses that with your spouse with another person of the opposite sex. It's emotional cheating, and I think it's also wrong. And I have zero problem with this one. But it amazes me how MANY people DO have trouble with it. In SO many ways.

2. Recycling (***)
By recycling I'm not talking about putting out a wad of stuff in your blue bin every week. Any fool can do that. I'm talking about being extremely dedicated to it. Actually rinsing out each tin can, each juice container, each plastic Danimals container, all junk mail, EVERYTHING which could be recycled, and making sure it gets to the right bins. Getting more bins, if needed. Recycling clothing by making something new out of them, or giving them away to thrift stores or Salvation Army or DAV or whatever charity you want. But keeping their usefulness in circulation and passing them on. SERIOUSLY recycling. It's hard, it is VERY hard sometimes, to do all of that. But I do continue to try.

3. Buying Local/American (****)
In general, I FULLY support buying local or American and even moreso, buying from my local community of craftspeople and Mom/Pop shops when I can do that. It costs more, but it supports local and national economy, it lets people make their OWN living instead of the profits being absorbed into a big corporation, and you are also not furthering the abuse of children and cheap adult labor in third world countries, making them work for NOTHING in factories just to survive. We've furthered this agenda in other countries because of the fact that we are always looking for a good deal, and I'm JUST AS MUCH TO BLAME for this, every time I purchase a $3 white t-shirt from WalMart. Probably every time I purchase ANYTHING from WalMart, actually. I do make a few exceptions, however. First: buying imports (food and goods) from companies which import craft goods from around the world and generally offer a fair price to the producers for them (I think Pier 1 and World Market both do this, as well as many local mom-and-pop import goods merchants, like Zanzibar here in Austin). Second issue is Costco, because they do use a lot of local products as well as some not, and I have read a lot that Costco is very good to their employees and conscientious as well. The other exception would be cars - we tend to only purchase cars which were actually manufactured in Japan. They don't pay their people total peanuts to make cars, and their exacting quality standards make their vehicles more reliable and well-built than American counterparts. That is an area I think America still needs to work on, and I have a lot of feelings about labor unions and what-not in association with that, but that's for another post.

4. Eating organic foods (**)
This is one that I'm not 100% bleeding-heart on, in terms of thinking I SHOULD try to eat everything under the sun organic. Let's face it - some of the most wonderful things in the world just don't COME in organic. That cheese in the packet of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese is probably RADIOACTIVE, but damn, it's tasty. I can buy organic Mac and Cheese, but it just doesn't taste the same. There are many other examples. But, generally speaking, organics and free-range items taste better to me (especially categories like produce and meats/fish), and make me feel better about what I'm putting into my body as well as my family's body. But I also think one can go overboard on that. There are likely whole categories where there's not much difference between organic and not. But in some areas, it's huge. If you dig too deeply into how non-organic meats come into existence, you'll get a HUMONGOUS case of the heeby jeebies, and you'll probably never eat meat again. Like chickens. OHMYGOD how horrible their little lives are before they are slaughtered. Not like they face a fate any better than an organic free-range chicken, but their lives are so much more pitiful and conditions so much more disgusting than organic animal farmers provide their animals while they're waiting for the slaughter. I try not to think about these things at all because HAVE YOU EVER HAD REALLY GOOD BARBEQUE? Like the SALT LICK? No? Well, you'd have a damn hard time being a vegetarian if you had. And I really doubt they are "organic." So I don't put vegetarianism on my list, but Lordy, I can see why people do. So this is why I call this something to work toward, rather than an absolute.

5. Avoiding television for little children (****)
While this isn't IMPOSSIBLE, some days it is SO FRIGGING HARD! I WANT so much to just have my child sit around with homemade toys and lots of books, entertaining herself or letting me teach her things, a la Little House on the Prairie. That would be awesome. And would also significantly reduce the quantity of "Mommy I need [fill in the blank plastic character toy]" at the store. And many days we watch little to no television. But some days I just don't have it in me to interact all day long or handle the incessant "Mommy play with me" requests I get, because she hasn't yet learned to entertain herself, and when she's sick or over-tired, she's not exactly pleasant to be around. I think the goal is terrific, and one I strive for repeatedly. I'm just not terribly good at it yet. As a mitigating factor, I try to limit it to educational programs and a little bit of Dora here and there. But only because my daughter SO LOVES DORA that I know she'd implode if I took her away. AND, I think Dora's little vignettes are somewhat educational. MORESO THAN FRIGGING SPONGEBOB anyway. I don't care for him.

6. Simple is Better (***)
Living a simple life, having a simple home, uncluttered and uncomplicated, preparing simple food, enjoying simple pleasures. I strive in this direction all the time. Hard to know if a person has actually achieved it since it's a total continuum. But I go through once per season and purge all of the clothing that hasn't been worn in a full year, and donate them to charity. I go through my knicknacks and kitchen things and stuff cluttering my house and pare it all down, putting out less and less each time I redo everything. Keeping things which have sentimental value over aesthetic value, if there's a choice. If I have something to say, I try and say it kindly but plainly, without a bunch of sugar coating around it (I could use major improvement here but I am trying). And I try to cook fairly simply and healthily. My mother might argue about the simple part - she's the queen of simple home cooking. I can always learn a lot from her.

7. Don't Judge Others, and Keep My Opinion to Myself (****)
I SO think this is a valuable trait to have. So many times people just want to tell their story, without someone criticizing their choices, especially if they haven't asked for advice or input. Just having someone to listen. But even moreso, I think it is admirable when people realize that there are multiple "right" answers and ways to go about living, without judging others for not doing things as they would do them. I find myself critiquing others in my head more than I think is really right or necessary, and continually remind myself that even if I wouldn't do as they are doing, it doesn't concern me, and I need not even have an opinion, much less attach myself to the outcome.

8. Travel via means other than personal vehicle where feasible (***)
This isn't horribly difficult in my neighborhood, because I live right in the middle of town, with access to restaurants, a little neighborhood grocery, Walgreens, a big gourmet market, parks, and public transport. BUT, having a child makes things more complicated in that regard, to where I often will drive instead of walking because it's a colossal undertaking with Hootie in tow, and she clammors to be held or carried a lot. But the other day our second vehicle was in the shop, my husband took my Forester, and I was carless. I walked to Central Market. I walked Hootie to school and back, and retrieved her on foot also. It was a bright, sunny, cool day and I felt very envigorated. But on the other hand, MOST of our friends live so far away one must drive to get there, so we use the car a lot. And clearly one cannot do weekly grocery shopping without a vehicle, and Costco? Well, that's just way out of the question. But this is a terrific ideal to work toward.

9. Take responsibility for your own actions (**)
This is one of the things I find SO important to do, and something I intend over the course of my child's upbringing to continue to impress upon her. We all have choices to make in our lives, and we have the freedom to make them. We ought to always own up to the choices we have made, and take whatever consequences come from them, good or bad. It's hard when you know you done MESSED UP on something, to own up to it and admit it, especially if it incurs wrath or disappointment or even worse, the loss of a relationship. But in the end it is such a sign of good character to just do it and feel like you were honest and responsible. In areas of relationship interaction, I find this is a really insidious one. People will tend to blame their upbringing on why they do things a certain way, even if they agree there's a better way to do it or not do it at all. "That was how I was raised" is the catch phrase. "I can't help it." No, a person can't help it if they have poor eyesight or hearing loss or multiple sclerosis or are short. But there are a lot of things that a person CAN help, if only they cared to pay attention and try to break the habit, and set a new pattern for themselves.

10. Healthy Exercise (**)
For so many reasons, getting a healthy dose of exercise into one's weekly routine is such a good thing. For the mind, the body, the spirit. It has such good effects all the way around, I can't see why it is so hard to always work it in. I think the key (which has been true for me) is finding something you can do that you love. For me, it used to be running. Easy to do just about anywhere, cheap, doesn't require special equipment or anything. But I got out of the habit of it when I got pregnant. However, since then, I have found yoga, and it is just as rewarding and easy for me to squeeze into my week, because I love it so.

So there are my 10 things. There are, I am sure, so many more. Fill me in.

Things I Can't Stand

2006-12-04T19:21:00.000-06:00

Maybe on a different day, I might be posting a nice fluffy blog about things I adore. That list is also very, very long, and probably quite boring. But I'm feeling a bit critical today, and thought maybe I could purge myself of all this critical snarkyness by just creating a list of stuff that either bugs the crap out of me or is extremely distasteful to me, and I'd be done with it. So here's to mental health. CHING CHING!

1. Eggs in their wiggly, fluffy form. I am fine if one is concealed in a cake, in creme brulee, and so on. But fried, scrambled, boiled, deviled, poached, migas, chile relleno casserole, quiche... no thank you. It's so bad that whereas normally when visiting someone's house and they serve something I might not care for, I'll eat it, I cannot do it with eggs. I feel it is probably more polite in the grand scheme of things to just not eat it than vomit on their new tablecloth they just got at Dillards.

2. Stickers on the bottom of things that I buy which do not easily come off by peeling or lightly picking with the fingernail. You know the ones, which come off in TINY, ITTY BITTY PIECES, leaving this nasty goo and white paper backing garbage on the bottom of the item, having already shredded both of my thumbnails.

3. Michaels, how they don't really show you the price of ANYTHING IN THEIR STORE. You go there, because they lure you with a sale of some sort. You try to determine in the aisle what the price is of said item, and you cannot. You have to go through the line at the register, which is obnoxiously long, in order to deal with inept people at the register. They quote you a price which doesn't match the sale you know you read this morning in their flyer. You inquire. They give you the "they don't pay me enough to care, lady" look.

4. The little shelves in my bathroom to the left of my sink. They are narrow, they are deep, and invariably, when I try to get anything but the one item which is sitting in the very front, everything falls off the shelf and into the trash. I need a better system.

5. My next door neighbor, who has a late 70's (?) model brown diesel truck, which is parked in his driveway, which is right next to both my bedroom window and that of my guestroom. He gets up early (pre-7am) and gets into this vehicle. RRRRRUNNNNNN-run-run-run-pftht. RRRUUUUUNNNNN-run-run-run-KAPOW-chuga-chuga-chuga... and finally gets it started after a few failed attempts. This ALWAYS WAKES ME UP, if I am actually sleeping. And of course wakes up anyone who comes to stay with me. DRIVES ME NUTS.

6. People who litter.

7. People who zip in and out of traffic, no signals, speeding, weaving in and out, on the shoulder sometimes. Not only does it piss me off that this is so dangerous to everyone around whom they drive, but it makes me angry that the person has such a holier-than-thou attitude about driving, that they shouldn't have to wait in traffic like everyone else. I also do not care for people who will not let you in when you are driving and need to merge. OH, and speaking of merging, this is another pet peeve. When you're going to have to merge from two lanes down to one, it drives me nuts that people do not take up the entire second lane from which you are having to leave. It's as though as soon as you see a sign that says you need to merge, everyone immediately gets into the new lane. AND, get p.o.'ed at people who continue to stay in the other lane until it's actually TIME to merge, and refuse to let them in to "punish" them for "trying to get ahead" or "not wait their turn". As though they should have gotten in line way beforehand. As I see it, you should use as much of that other lane as is available, and be in single file as short a distance as is necessary, and that will make traffic go a bit faster.

8. Underwear that crawls up my butt. Enough said there.

9. People who let their dog defecate in my yard and walk on without picking it up as if that is actually okay. Ew.

10. Itchy sweaters. Actually, any sort of itchiness in clothing at all. Just wrap me in a big cotton ball and be done, already.

11. Other foods that gross me out: lima beans. GAG me. beets. Not a fan. brussel sprouts - they taste to me like what I imagine raw petroleum to taste like. Bitter. Papaya and guava. I can do all other tropical fruits, including the lychee. Not those two. Bleah. Okra. That's pretty much slimy and gross too. Although I did once eat okra that my Aunt Ginny prepared in Lubbock, TX when I was a child, and I liked it. I was SO DISAPPOINTED the next 3 times I ate it, and how nasty it was, and how I didn't remember it being nasty. Ew. SUSHI - that is just VILE. It's a texture issue also. I cannot stand it, it makes my mouth salivate, and not in a good way.

12. The fact that I cannot look good in jeans. Any waistline which is at my waist (or God forbid above) looks like crap, and is horribly out of style. Any low-rise pants allow my baby pooch belly to flop over the top. That is just not attractive either. I see teen girls with that look all the time - the fat roll in the hips and belly, hanging over the band of their pants. But it looks STUPID. And I look stupid wearing it.

13. The reception I get on our PBS station. Something got jacked up with the rabbit ears we have perched in the attic to get reception. Yes, we're the only household in America which does not have cable. We have rabbit ears. In our attic. And PBS doesn't come in great.

14. CHEEZY songs. That Christmas song, about the little kid who wants to buy his Mama a pair of pretty shoes, because she loves shoes and she's dying of cancer, and those would make her feel better. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?! And I thought it couldn't get worse, but today on our local MIX radio station, they were laughing so hard about that song and people called in to remind them of some OTHER cheezy sappy songs. You know which ones I mean. There was one called Roses for Mama, in which a guy is breezing through some town on his mother's birthday and stops to have roses wired to her house, and a little boy wants to buy roses for his Mama, but cannot afford it. The dude helps the little fella out, only to see him kneeling at a gravesite on his way out of town, giving his roses to his dead Mama. WHAT?!? Oh, and the same dude has another song called Teddy Bear, in which this little "crippled" (his term) boy gets on the CB radio, wanting to talk to the truckers because he's crippled and cannot do anything else, and is lonely. AND HIS DADDY GOT IN A WRECK JUST LAST WEEK AND DIED, as if the crippled part wasn't bad enough! LORD. Then someone else called in about that song, "Where've You Been?" about the couple who had never spent a single night apart, love at first sight, inseparable yadda yadda, but got separated in the nursing home, different floors, one has Alzheimers or some crap, the other one comes to see him/her, and that one REMEMBERS THE SPOUSE after having remembered nothing else, and asks the same line of the chorus, "Where've You Been? I've looked for you forever and a day...." blah blah. CAN YOU PLUCK ANY HARDER AT THE HEARTSTRINGS, PEOPLE? And this stuff SELLS LIKE HOTCAKES.

15. Going to look for the last cookie that you saved, only to find it has been eaten by someone else in your house.

16. Taking your car in for preventative maintenance and coming back with a 4 figure bill.

17. Getting on the scale after Thanksgiving or Christmas. It's just not good.

18. Being woken up by a panting or yelping dog who wants out for 2.2 seconds, RIGHT AFTER I JUST FELL ASLEEP! It takes me forever to get to sleep as it is, and once I'm woken back up, I have to START ALL OVER AGAIN.

19. The way that IKEA sets up their "flow" through their store. And that there aren't quick and easy paths straight to the "Market Hall" area. AND their rigid customer service policies. Those kinda suck too.

20. The fact that it is IMPOSSIBLE to talk to anyone at eBay or PayPal when you have an issue. Grrrrrrr!

Okay. I feel better. I need to go do a few yoga meditations and drink some green tea or something.

Heavy Heart

2006-11-29T15:43:00.000-06:00

My Mama left today, after having spent the last two weeks with me. Excuse me, I need to blow my nose. I've been leaking fluids - tears, nose funk - since she left. I don't full-on cry much anymore, but I rarely escape a goodbye without leaking fluid. It used to be much worse, I used to just SOB, which let me tell you, ain't a pretty sight. You know those women who cry so gracefully and beautifully? The ones whose faces are serene as the tears roll quietly down their beautiful snowy white cheeks? Who can continue to breathe through their beautiful noses while this whole silent tear business is going on? They are the same people who wear a size zero, the same people whose hair is beautiful no matter how humid it is. Yeah, that's not me. When I cry, my face kinda twists all up, I get furrowed brow and quivery lip and BIG FAT EYELIDS and a swollen, red nose. I do not cry pretty. So it's probably good that I don't full-on do that often with the airport goodbyes anymore. I can just see the airport security guy telling me that all this fluid is definitely more than 3oz, and I can't bring that on the plane. I'd have to check myself in the cargo section.

But my heart is always wet-beach-towel-heavy. There's a part of me that feels like a child, all warm and fuzzy and cared-for, that feels like everything is right with the world when my Mama is around. She does shit for me my husband would NEVER do. She irons my ironable things (this is a big list, skip to end of parenthesis if you aren't anal like me - tablecloths, doilies (shut up, YES, I have doilies), runners, tea towels/dish towels, pillowcases, the tops of my embroidered sheets, duvet covers, little girls frilly and not so frilly dresses, my tops/blouses/skirts). She makes sure we always have fresh limes because come 3:30 Wednesday through Sunday, ain't the bar open yet? It's time for a Cuba Libra! She makes her little guest quarters seem like a slice of her little heaven, even though it's my guest room in my own home. It's hers, when she's here. It's cozy waking up in the morning and knowing she's in the other room, waiting until 8 (yep, she's a spoiled rotten slacker) to bring her coffee in bed and warm up a decadent cinnamon roll for her. Watching the joy she gets out of stopping at Tamale House #3, which Does Not Sell Tamales, buying her two guacamole crispy tacos for less than $2. Hearing her subtly direct me in her Mom Tone with cooking, cleaning, laundry, occasionally child-rearing, with her little bits of wisdom (which I am free to take or leave, because it IS MY HOUSE, after all, but generally I take them). And then knowing she's gone to sleep in my home as early as my daughter, because her RA takes a lot out of her, and she needs about 10-12 hours of sleep each night with 3 potty breaks. I grow so accustomed to the little bright spots when she's here, the conversation, the swinging on the porch, the extra set of eyeballs to keep an eye on Hootie (read: keep her from breaking shit or killing herself) when I'm getting things done I hardly get a chance to do when she's not here. And when she's gone, even though it's been all of about 30 minutes and she is still sitting at the Austin airport, probably having just boarded the plane, my heart feels so heavy. It's like it takes extra energy just to continue shoving hemoglobin through its arteries, contracting and expanding. Then I get used to that feeling like a constant drip of water in the middle of my forehead, coming from a rusty pipe under which I'm strapped to a board for my torture, and start to not notice it so much anymore. Visits cannot go on forever, and eventually we all go back to living our lives, she in her town, with my sister and family and her friends, and I in my town, with my husband and daughter and friends. I know that I will see her soon, that after Christmas, mid-January, we'll go back up to the Pacific Northwest and help her recover from another surgery. In the FOG. That is so thick you can't see your mailbox across the street, let alone Five Mile. And it'll be colder than a whore's heart, 10 degrees colder than anywhere else in the town, and with 3 extra feet of snow. But I miss her nonetheless.

And so does Hootie. We love you, Moosie!

I Did It. EEEEEK!

2006-11-25T18:07:00.000-06:00

So, WAY back at the beginning of this blog, I stated that I fully intended to get a tattoo. I showed the drawing, I discussed it in some detail. I explained what it was all about. And then that little intention fell off the face of the earth. Lack of balls? Nah, lack of money. Until 20 Nov 2006. Yes, last Monday. I got it. I went in, with my Mama, and got my tattoo. I wish my sister could have been here, and gotten hers with me, but we will take her in to get it done soon, when she is here in April.

'Did it hurt?' you might ask. I'd have to say the answer is somewhere in between "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!!?" and "At least I didn't punch anybody out." I had two breaks to get up, walk around, get the circulation back in my bottom lip which I bit to keep still.

Mig was very professional. He asked if I had any questions, and I said not about tattoos themselves. They are self-explanatory. But, I was curious about the sterility of the process, and how risky is it for me to get something as a result of this. He told me they use a new needle for each customer, the device/needles are not "disposable" but are sterilized in a machine called an autoclave. The thing gets inspected every few weeks to ensure it is functioning properly. He wore gloves, used alcohol to sterilize my back first, and was the utmost in tidy. Mig is a friend of my friend Shonna, whom I have mentioned before. I have extremely high respect for Shonna, and I know that her group of friends, every single bloody one of them I have met, are all very high quality individuals. Mig is no different. Although the tattoo studio where I got this thing done looked very much like you would suspect - very brightly colored, pumping in loud rap music with a lot of heavily pierced and tattooed individuals working there - walls lined with stylized tattoo-type images of everything from tits to dragons to tribal pointy-spiky designs to flowers and butterflies to Harley Davidsons. None of that was on my agenda though. Mig has no tattoos on his arms, neck, chest, face, or back. He said he does have some on his legs, however I didn't see them to know how many or of what. He's very articulate, and due to us both having had children around the same time, was very curious about my experiences parenting, going through childbirth, and so on. His wife is lovely.

The chatting took about an hour, plus the placement of the design on my back with a sort of "fake tattoo" type paper thingie of my design. I had to have him wipe it off and start over twice to get it just so. Evidently my back is kinda lopsided, because although it is where it should be, it looks a bit not quite straight. But it's me, not the tattoo.

The actual tattooing took about an hour and a little bit. He outlined it first, then drew some areas thicker according to the design. It did feel like a cat dragged a claw around my back for about an hour. It was not pleasant. Several times I couldn't continue talking or answering questions. My mom filled in the gaps though. :-) When it was done, it felt immeasurably better than having it done did. Afterward, it felt like a bad sunburn. I kept the bandage on all night, which SUCKED worse than the tattoo felt after I took it off. I don't recommend leaving it on.

Now, it is almost done with its scabbing/sluffing business. It's almost flat (it was very raised for a few days). So here it is:

It is in the center of my back, but above the bra strap, rather than below. Still easily concealable, yet not so much so that nobody will ever see it besides my husband. I catch a glimpse of it or look at it in the mirror, and cannot believe it is MY back upon which this design is permanently inked. It's very strange-feeling. I love it, but it's weird. I don't know if that makes sense.

One or More?

2006-11-22T21:32:00.000-06:00

This is Thanksgiving week, and my Mama is here in town. Thus, the posts are a lot fewer and further between. In fact, I think the last post was the day before she arrived.
I just read a post from RubySoho which sparked further interest in me, because I'm amongst the few who choose to have just one child. Aaryn commented about how she doesn't miss the baby phase, as much as she enjoyed Ruby's baby phase. I am 100% in agreement with this point. Points like this always beg the question for me, "why, if you enjoy something in life, is there an eternal quest to relive it? Can it not just be, in its goodness, and not happen over and over again?" I loved going through all of Hootie's little phases and yet, I am perfectly happy to remember them fondly, not try to get them back with another child. I'm not saying that people who have more than one child are doing this, but rather I am saying that enjoying the first child's baby stage does not necessitate wanting to "repeat" the experience. Not to mention the fact that the experience itself will be nothing like the first one when repeated. And that's not entirely because the children are different children, though that is part of it. But the experience of having a second is a lot more hectic and hurried and a lot less surprising and full of wonderment and awe. By the time the second one comes along, you have the first one in the house needing and wanting attention. You no longer have the luxury of sitting for hours rocking a little tiny baby in your arms, watching her sleep, nuzzling the baby fuzz on her head and smelling her perfect little baby smell. You don't have time to slowly trace the little veins on her eyelids, or smooth the little baby hairs back while they sleep, and lie on the floor with a stuffed thing, wagging it back and forth in her peripheral vision, just to see if she can follow it. That one is now running like wildfire through the house, singing made-up songs at top volume, while you hurry through changing diapers and nursing and/or bottle feeding, hoping the older one doesn't get into trouble while you're quickly tending to the other one. No, for people having second and third (or more) children, they do so because they love and want to have a whole bunch of them around, not because they want to relive the first child's baby phase.
For us, I think it comes down to being satisfied with our life with just one. She is fascinating, she is brilliant, she says the strangest things sometimes, and makes us burst with pride (just like every other parent out there). I do experience moments where I know that she will no longer sit on my lap, all leggy and cozy, wanting me to "hold her like a baby." It makes me sad that the day will come where she doesn't want 500 hugs and kisses a day, where probably weeks or longer will go by during which I won't likely hear "I love you SO MUCH, Mommy." I wish I could slow time down and soak her up for longer and longer, but no matter how fast or slow time races or drags, there will be an end to it, and it is the end I dread, no matter how long it takes to get there. At the same time, I am also loving watching her little mind work and learn. I hope, at least, that I am creating an environment for her where she can become whatever her heart desires, and can always ask me anything she wants to know. I hope that I will provide her a springboard from which to jump curiously into the world and embrace all of the wonderment it holds, rather than fearing it because of the scary things within it. I don't usually have the slightest idea how to impart characteristics I think are important and admirable in a person, or if it is even possible to "impart" them. I think that part is a crapshoot, honestly. But I spend a good deal of time thinking about it, how to teach and guide and inspire and motivate her. Truly, I have my hands full with just her. My Mama still thinks in her heart of hearts that we should have another. I don't know if it is just her desire for a steady stream of little tiny babies in her life (oh how she loves little babes!) or if she really thinks my life is missing out on something by not having another. We thought about it for a while, thinking she maybe "deserved" to be given a life-long companion or playmate, though that isn't a guarantee either. Many siblings don't ever become close, let alone stay close. And creating another person just for the express purpose of having a playmate for the first one seems like a rather flimsy reason to have a child.
In the end, we decided, at least for the time being (unless one of us has a change of heart), that we are perfectly satisfied with our one amazing little individual. One we can take to Europe and other parts of the world soon, one that we can likely send to college almost anywhere she wants to go. One we can fit neatly into our tiny little home, and still live in the city. Because that one little being fills our hearts up to the brim and overflows all on her own.

Seriously Weird Vegetation

2006-11-13T07:48:00.000-06:00

Her Weirdness, Eunice:

My deck is the current residence for this peculiar cactus that my friend Shonna recommended I purchase from the nursery where she works.

I do not know her Latin plant name but in plant-people circles, Eunice is not well-liked. Evidently these flowers smell like rotting corpse. I cannot import a smell file for you to smell it, but I can confirm their odor is nasally offensive.

There are some damn strange plants out there on this planet.

Tubas In Her Ears

2006-11-10T22:36:00.000-06:00

This evening, it was my turn to execute Hootie's bedtime routine. On My Day, Hootie is generally very easy to get to sleep, whereas when it's The Husband's turn, she will start in very early in the evening to subtly (or not so subtly) sneak in subliminal messaging suggesting it's actually MY night, not his. Or that possibly I'll be doing the stories, and he can do the songs, because after all, HE'S a good singer (Which is an absolute falsehood. He can't carry a tune in a bucket, and though I'm no undiscovered diva, at least I can sing the notes on key).
Tonight was a bit of a different story. Hootie had her bath, we brushed her teeth and she gave Daddy a hug and kiss goodnight. We both crawled up onto her bed with two stories in hand, and I started to read. She began to ask 412 questions or find other ways to dilly dally on each page, trying to make the storytelling process linger as long as humanly possible.
"Let me count the eggs, Mommy. One...two...three, no, let me start over. One...two...three...four, wait wait! I have to start over. One..."
"Hootie, I'm going to read the rest of the story now."
We finished stories, and sang a song. Then we said our prayers. "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. Angels watch me through the night, and wake me with the morning light." (I see no reason at age 3 for her to say the part about if she dies and what should God be doing then? That's nuts.) God bless.... (insert EVERYONE WE KNOW, EVERY STUFFED ANIMAL IN HER ROOM, the light, the kitchen, the dog, her Moosie's dog, her Auntie Wah's dog, and who were those people down the street? Oh right, Champ and Hays. Them too). Amen. Time for kisses, hugs, and bed.
Hoo: "But I don't WANT to sleep in my bed. I can't SLEEP in here."
Mommy: "Hootie, this is your room, of course you can sleep in here. You have slept in here all week. Put your head down and try. Goodnight, sweetheart."
I shut the door about 3/4 of the way shut and walk out toward the living room.
4 seconds pass.
Hoo: "MOMMY! YOU DIDN'T BRUSH MY HAIR! MY HAIR IS WET!" (it was in a ponytail and didn't need it, but okay).
Mommy: "Okay, let's brush your hair." I go in with the brush, get it all brushed out, re-kiss and hug her, say good night. I shut the door about 3/4 of the way shut and again try to walk toward the living room.
4 more seconds pass.
Hoo: "MOMMY! I'M HAVING A HARD TIME GETTING TO SLEEP." (Repeat 17 times, verbatim, top volume).
After listening to all this plaintive crying from the other room for a while, I go in again.
Mommy: "Hootie, it's time for bed."
Hoo: "But Mommy, I'm having a hard time getting to sleep. There are LOUD NOISES in my ears."
Mommy: "What kind of loud noises? A bell? A whistle?"
Hoo: "Tubas."
Mommy: "Tubas? There are tubas in your ears?"
Hoo: "Yes, Mommy. I can't sleep with tuba noises in my ears."
(Of course, there are no noises going on at all in the house or outside worth even mentioning).
Mommy: [Holding her ears closed a minute] "There, is that better?"
Hoo: "Nope. I can't sleep with these noises. BUT, if I went to sleep on YOUR bed, the tubas would go away and I could get some sleep."
But of course. Why didn't *I* think of that?!

Statistical Updates

2006-11-08T17:47:00.000-06:00

Taking a page from Sweet Juniper's post of today, I have a few random statistics to share of my own, for the household of the Hoo and environs.

Quantity of snot flowing out of my child's nose today: About a tablespoon
Likely quantity of snot flowing out of my child's nose tomorrow: About 3 cups
Likelihood I will acquire whatever it is my child just caught from some germy little monster she encountered somewhere: 0%
Likelihood I will get a sinus infection instead: 99.9% (gotta leave room for prayer to work here...)
Number of times my child has said, "Mommy, play with me?" in the last hour: 4
Number of times I have checked the weather forecast to see if they have removed the infernal 80's from the upcoming week: 17
Number of sweaters in my closet: 11
Number of times I will be able to wear one of them this winter while in Texas: 4
Number of people who actually read this blog: 3, I think
Number of times I wonder daily why I bother writing it: 8 or 9
Pairs of shoes in my husband's wardrobe: 5
Pairs of shoes in my daughter's wardrobe: 11
Pairs of shoes in my wardrobe: 34
Pairs of shoes I still think I need: About 400 :-)
Pairs of shoes I can afford to buy myself at the moment: 0
Times this week I have cooked a home-cooked meal: 2/4 (so far, there are still 3 days left, people)
Times this week I have bagged it and ordered take-out: 1/4
Times I just reheated leftovers: 1/4
Number of people who actually give a shit about that: 1 (my sister will let me talk about anything. Love you Wah!)
Minutes I have left until I complete this post? .5

Politics Are Out.

2006-11-08T17:27:00.000-06:00

Note to Self: Do not engage your father in a discussion about politics again in the future.
Postscript Note to Self: When father attempts to engage you in a discussion about politics in the future, feign ANYTHING to get off the phone - doorbell? Something on the stove is on fire? Kid just wrote HOOTIE in crayon on the wall? Just get off the phone immediately.

I had a rather unpleasant conversation with my father recently, as you can tell, involving politics. He is an avid Bush supporter, feels like if we weren't fighting the war in Iraq, it would be going on in Southern California instead, and he's definitely not pleased that he raised a child who isn't Republican. It isn't that I'm Democrat either, or a Liberal, or anything with a title. I think politicians generally speaking have compromised morals and really don't stand for much if trading it for some other treat of the day will get them somewhere.

It's just a rathole. Don't. Go. Down. Rathole.

Out.

Jesus is a Music Teacher?

2006-11-03T19:45:00.000-06:00

It has recently come to my attention that Jesus is alive and well, and teaches music at Hyde Park Baptist Church. And, get this! Jesus is a WOMAN! How so, you ask? Last you heard, Jesus died and was buried about 1,973 years ago, was raised from the dead, and ascended into Heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father*, right? That's what I thought too. Not so. According to Hootie, her music teacher IS Jesus. Every time she walks past her on the way out of the building after I retrieve her from preschool, she waves and says, "Goodbye, Jesus!" or "Have a good weekend, Jesus!" or "Thanks for the songs, Jesus!" I'm not kidding.
I'm not sure whether or not to be embarrassed or amused by this. In theory, if I were teaching her correctly, she'd know this couldn't possibly be true. But if truth be told, the child's religious background consists of a) being baptized Catholic, due to her paternal family being Catholic, b) saying prayers at night before bed, "God blessing" everyone in creation that we know, c) reciting grace before dinner (adorably, I might add!), d) attending Baptist preschool, e) attending Catholic church once in a while, usually resulting in her and one parent tearing ass through the cry room at break-neck speed, while the other parent sits in the pew not listening to the sermon, but rather wondering what the one parent and child are doing to keep themselves out of trouble, and f) owning about 4 different religiously oriented books, most of which are on the subject of Christmas, Easter, or how and why Noah got all them damn animals into his big ol' ship. It isn't that I do not want to share my religious viewpoints with my child, because I do and will, one day. But the way I see and view and experience religion is... complicated. At least too complicated for a child of 3, even a future Mensa member. And I sorta figure the Baptist church would be giving her the same rudimentary basics that the Catholic church would. But somehow, every last one of us who have been involved in her religious education have failed her if she thinks the music teacher is Jesus. I really don't have the foggiest idea how she came up with this notion, and/or why nobody prior to me last week has even caught it. Maybe because the stories about Jesus are often sung TO Jesus, and she's in the front of the room, being sung to?
Well now you know. If you're looking for Jesus or have a special request, go to the music room at HPBC. I'm sure she'll be happy to help you out.

* I didn't even have to look that up. Regurgitation of Catholic mass materials courtesy of my photographic memory, which apparently works both in audio as well as video.

My Yard is Africa

2006-11-02T15:00:00.000-06:00

Every novel I have ever read about Africa describes the environment as almost insuppressable. The weather is violent in many directions - there are areas of barren desert, dense tropical rainforest, jungle, wild savannahs with flooding and drought. The vegetation itself, especially in the rainforest, is a tangled mass of vines and branches and roots. The insects, snakes, and other creatures are hearty and dominant. One must be extremely resilient and persistent to try and tame the lands in Africa; those who have lived there for centuries tend to just co-occupy the land rather than tame it. It's the western influence which brings about cities and transforms the land into something it wasn't before.
But if people stopped beating it back with scythes and bulldozers and chainsaws, within a short matter of time, the land would stretch its tendrils up and reclaim the surface for its own. I envision a mass of vines growing amongst the cars and cement structures and lights, engulfing them until they are swallowed up into the earth.
This is my yard, the back yard in particular. It is a little 6000 square foot section of Africa. When we first bought our house, the yard consisted of tall weeds, mud, and assorted junk buried in the dirt. No grass, no buildings, no deck, no fence. Only what grows wild and natural. We added the aforementioned items - tilling the soil, bringing in sod, creating a dog run with that black fabric which would resist weeds, creating a nice deck and fence to delineate recreational spaces from each other. We built a garage and painted it green. There are flowerbeds and walkways with stepping stones.
And now, my yard is reaching up its tendrils to swallow up these things and bring back the loose weeds. The rock-hard dirt has moved my fenceposts so they are no longer straight, pulling the panels of pickets to and fro, up and down. The deck structure leans to a side, and the tree sheds a half ton of pollen and leaves and nuts all year round. The weeds have completely consumed the rocked-in dog run, to where a field of volunteer sunflowers and spiderwort plants loom tall next to my windows. The dead branches which fall from the tree into the lawn get tossed or drug by the dog into the disasterous dog run, creating a makeshift barrier between sod and rock, if such a delineation is even clear anymore. My dog is nature's accomplice in this process, digging random holes, tearing the black fabric with his claws, carving a nest in the matted carpet of tree refuse in his corner. The paint has already begun to peel off the garage wood, and the stepping stones will not remain straight no matter how many times I level them. When the rains come, they come in gullywasher form, pounding the unnatural surfaces into submission. Then the hot sun beats down, removing any layer(s) of varnish on any sorry attempts to maintain wood furniture on the deck. The fabric of the umbrella and chair seats on the patio set are faded from sun, mildewed from standing water, and thinning out. Everything appears to be falling apart. And it's about 3 years old.
I visit my mom and sister, or my husband's sister in Seattle, and their yards are beautifully manicured, tidy and manageable. The insects are tiny and rare, the soil is easy to dig, the landscape is calm, and the grass is soft. No forces of destruction hover on the property line, waiting for them to put away their rakes and shovels and brooms, like they do at my house. Sometimes I wonder if I ought to just give the yard back to nature, as it seems so intent upon reclaiming it. Yet I would never spend time out there in such a condition, so I will continue to toil away in my spare time, hacking at it with my scythe, beating it into submission. But as I do it, I know I'm fighting an uphill battle, going against the grain.

Beautiful Patchwork

2006-11-01T08:51:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I accompanied my dear friend Shonna to the Austin Museum of Art, where displayed in the gallery was an exhibit entitled, "The Quilts of Gees Bend." Upon hearing that we would be viewing a quilting exhibit, visions came to my mind of wild works of art in intricate detail, beautifully embroidered wedding rings and log cabins and floral extravaganzas. I have seen the quilt medium used as a canvas for creating scenes and find that mystifying, but this is not what I encountered.
Upon walking into the exhibit hall, there was a flat screen monitor to the right. A documentary of sorts was playing, in which a very colorful group of black women from Gees Bend, Alabama were giving their recountings of how and why quilts were made in their community. On the walls were some amazing asymmetrical quilts, pieced together from scraps of all kinds of fabrics, mostly all worn-out clothing. Amidst bits and pieces of work denim and corduroy and aprons were darned holes, spots of dirt scrubbed and bleached as much as they could be, leaving behind untold stories of how these flaws and stains came to be. Nothing was thrown away - if the item became too worn and damaged to continue its life as a piece of clothing, it was cut and torn into strips or squares, and sewn into quilts for bedcoverings. In the cold of winter, beds were covered with many layers of quilts for warmth, or hung over doors and windows to keep out the drafty cold air. With the history these rough folky works of utilitarian art embodied, they were breathtaking. Not in the traditional, sparkling clean, precisely and finely detailed way, but in the fabric-of-life way. I could close my eyes listening to the women in the documentary sing, in Gees Bend, Alabama, and envision scuffling in my worn-out work boots along a gravel road between two fields of cotton or tobacco. With a bright blue sky and warm humid afternoon upon me, the sounds of low woman singing drift to my ears. I look to the side and see a droopy roofed clapboard house with so little paint remaining on the wood, I can barely tell what color it once was. The smell of honey and biscuits wafts out the front door, and the breeze blows it languidly around my face and into my nose. The same breeze is gently moving and drying four newly quilted and washed quilts hung out on a makeshift line spanning between the house and an old oak tree to the side. They are each different, from four different families, with the latest scraps and bits from the house. It evokes a sense of "down home" and the deep South. I want to curl up on the alfalfa grass with a book and one of these treasures.
These women were so humble, so of the earth, and so inspiring. They live their lives, piecing together quilt tops in their spare time, then quilting the tops into blankets with their women friends, singing hymns and folksongs that possibly hearken back to the days of slavery in the South. Or stopping to relay the latest news from a child who has moved away. Their female children and grandchildren play under the quilts and watch the needles go in and out of the fabric, knowing one day they would make their own quilts as a rite of passage.
Some of the quilts were turned into prints by a printing house in Berkeley, CA, though for what purpose other than art, I am not sure. But all of them were beautiful and unique in their way.
I was mesmerized and inspired. I can sew, especially if not constrained by the requirement that something be perfectly straight. How beautiful would it be, to have a quilt that contained bits and pieces of my own family's history and life? Bits of Hootie's baby clothing that no longer fits, and might never be worn again by anyone? Old jeans, ripped in the knees and stained with grass from gardening, or paint from freshening up an old desk, old tea towels and dishcloths used as potholders and rustic old bowl dryers over the years? I think it would be lovely.
What has inspired you lately?

Big and Deep

2006-10-31T22:51:00.000-06:00

The child has the biggest, bluest eyes. Just like her father.

She was a fairy for Halloween. Again. Despite the pleading for and subsequent purchasing of two OTHER costumes in the weeks leading up to Halloween - a firefighter, and a pirate. Pretty pink winged things win out again.

What a Moment!

2006-10-28T15:59:00.000-06:00

I've been neglectful of my blog recently because I have been again out of town, in the Pacific Northwest, on a mission. I have come without child, and return again tomorrow. The purpose of the visit was twofold. First, my Mama turned 60, so I went to surprise her for her day. Second, my sister in law is having a party at her new house in Seattle for Halloween. The Husband had to come up for business reasons, so I wrangled a little visit myself for the weekend. The party is tonight.
The best, however, was surprising my Mama. She has had her knickers in a twist about her birthday for about the last year. Somehow, turning 60 hit a few panic buttons for her, and made her feel old. Between her doctors telling her along the way that due to her disease she'd never see 60, and knowing that people who work in hospitals characterize anyone over 60 as "elderly", she's been subconsciously battling the concept of BEING old. Like death is right around the corner for her. The truth is, with the disease she has, death could very well be right around the corner. But probably no moreso than it has been for the last 5-10 years. The truth also is that she could live to be 70 or better, it all depends on fate. She could die of something completely different than rheumatoid arthritis or its complications. I could get hit by a car or my plane could go down tomorrow. We never know. The best we can do is to enjoy each day, and not obsess on how we can outfox the Grim Reaper.
So anyway, Mama was having a hard time. She had been working on herself to pull out of it, had been feeling like it would be alright, but told eveyrone she wanted to do nothing special for her birthday, no dinners or visits or presents or anything. She just wanted to pretend it was any other day, and get on with it. But the day before the birthday, she was entirely fit to be tied. Just all in a dither, couldn't figure out what to do or not do, thought about going out of town just to get out of town and be doing something somewhere else instead of sitting and WAITING for her birthday to come and go. This was the day I was to arrive. My sister and I hadn't told her a word about me coming, and were lying enough to get kicked straight to some ring of pergatory if not hell, in order to create a plausible theory for where I was and what I was doing. We talk at least once a day if not more, so avoiding her was tricky. I got to Dallas and heard she wanted to go out of town, so I told her she couldn't, as her gift was being delivered to her house between 5 and 8 that night. She wanted me to see about having it delivered some other time, or having someone else sit and wait for it instead. I told her that it had to be her at home, and that I ask so little of her, couldn't she just be there this once? The knife slid silently into her heart and turned 90 degrees, as she realized it was true, I didn't ask much. So she promised to be home.
My sister picked me up from the airport like a trooper, and drove me over to Mom's house. We saw her, in her yard, at 5:30 pm and freaked out. WHAT IS SHE DOING IN HER YARD?!? She's NEVER in her yard at this hour! We whipped the van around and went the other way, until the coast was clear. Whew! She went inside. I got out of the van and casually walked up the street to the house, and called on my cell phone. "Hey Ma. What's going on? Whatcha doin?" She said she'd just come in from getting the mail, what was I doing? I said I was just hanging out, catching a bit of fresh air. And by the way, I had confirmation that her present had been delivered, just outside her garage door. Could she go look? I was walking up the driveway. She opened the door from her house to her garage, and claimed nothing was there. I said, "No, not INSIDE the garage. OUTSIDE. Look outside." She looked through the windows in the garage door and saw my toothy grinning face staring back at her. "WHAT THE FUCK? Is that YOU?!?!" I said "none other, Mama." She came FLYING out of the front door of her house, grabbed me and hugged and kissed me about 50 times. My sister parked the car, waving madly, and we got the boys and my stuff out of the van and into the house. She was so happy, to have her girls there with her.
For her birthday, she got coffee in bed, a little bit of shopping, a Dick's burger for lunch, and dinner out at Anthony's, a wonderful seafood restaurant. Then, a trip to an old historic hotel for a cocktail after dinner, and posing for a ton of opulent pictures in the lobby. Never once was she sad, anxious, or upset about her birthday. It dissolved as she appreciated what she does have in her life, and how much she is loved by her girls.

Our mother is beautiful, she is strong, she has conviction and isn't afraid to tell you about it. She's graceful, loving, and giving. She has friends who love and cherish her, daughters who would die for her, and grandchildren who think she has hung the moon. Who cares which birthday it is?

Bad, bad words, dammit.

2006-10-22T16:08:00.000-06:00

There is a very subtle war going on in my family. And by family, I mean the glop which I call my husband and child, and my mother and sister. There are obviously other family members out there, but it only applies to these select folk, this war I'm talking about.
You see, there are PARTS of my family which like to pepper their language with a variety of interesting words. Some of which are made up. Some of which are used untraditionally. Like cuss words, for example. Although my mother will tell you, all holier-than-thou, that "Profanity is the effort of a feeble mind to express itself forcefully" while she's telling me to stop saying "fuck" so much, in the next sentence she will either say that or "Goddammit" herself. The husband, well, he rarely cusses. Occasionally, especially when he's talking about something moronic at work, or when he's drunk. But he always has a huge bit of guilt afterwards, as though he's let his judgment lapse. GOD FORBID. You know, the rest of us mere mortals lay in fear of being discovered to be... well... HUMAN.
And then there's my mother's interesting use of the words "faggot" and "queer". She will insist rather vehemently that the first definition of the word queer in the dictionary is "odd" or "unusual". Okay, so we can get away with saying something is queer, and have people by the context understand it to mean odd or unusual. Simpler minds out there may stumble on that, but whatever. And then there's faggot. When she says it, she means basically the same thing as queer, yet with a lot more oomph. It never ever ever means homosexual when said amongst us, it just means dorky but usually in an adorable kind of way. Like, when my husband comes home from work, takes off his work clothing, and dons a blue swimsuit, a t-shirt with some logo from his job printed on it, YET HE CONTINUES WEARING THE DARK DRESS SOCKS. He sits all casual-like on the couch, as though this is perfectly acceptable attire. THAT is faggot. Or, when a person wakes up after a bender, with the hair all caddywhompus, half mohawk, half rooster tail in the back, noticing when they put on their pajamas, they put the top on inside out, and the bottoms on backwards, and they are missing a sock. That is also faggot. Crooked ponytails on my child with flowered pants and a plaid shirt, and maybe a second shirt on top for good measure, all of her choosing, that's also faggot. And one time, my Mama said she thought someone was breaking into her house (turns out it was her brother, but didn't know it at the time). Instead of being all brave like she would like to think she'd be, with her kids there and everything, she got up on the couch and ran back and forth screaming. Now THAT IS FAGGOT. It's a term which needs to have a word for it, and preferably one that isn't "faggot", since that seems to incite some serious emotions in people, and not at all in the right direction. If you aren't in my mother's little circle of folk who know her and have come to understand the meaning of this word, you might take offense. So, there ought to be something else in its place, descriptive yet not so damn CONTROVERSIAL.
The husband, he doesn't particularly care for these two terms. No, let me be a little more clear on this point. HE FUCKING HATES IT. I get the "I'm SO DISAPPOINTED IN YOU" look if I have ever said either word within earshot of Hootie. I might as well have said, "Fucking Asshole Piece of Shit Prick." And other choice words I probably would have to crawl in a hole from embarrassment if my inlaws ever read my blog. So I'll refrain. It could happen someday. We have agreed that we make every effort not to cuss in front of the child. I won't say I have never done it (BECAUSE I WOULD BE LYING LIKE A DOG ON A RUG) but I am pretty good to avoid fuck and shit and I modify things like damn into "dangit" or "doggoneit" or other schoolmarmy variety thereof. But I think back to my childhood, and I remember vividly that my actual mother cussed like a sailor, and my father rarely did, and I didn't until I was old enough to do so with permission. That's the way it was. You did what you were told, those were the rules, you didn't cuss around your family, but what you did amongst your friends, well, that was your perrogative. So Lord help all of my friends, because when I am away from my child, I have BUILT UP cussing which must come out, and it usually spews out like toothpaste under pressure.
So anyway, the war. My mother likes to say things to my husband like calling him faggot, just to get a rise out of him. And my husband likes to give the disapproving glare or the serious talk to either of us, if we happen to cuss around the child, especially. I'm caught in the middle. I can understand both points of view. Faggot just sometimes needs to be said, and yeah, it's probably not right to say it or other such things around Hootie, at such an impressionable age. What is a girl to do?

The Man

2006-10-17T15:52:00.000-06:00

"This is stupid," he said, looking down and a little away from me.
I turned to look at him, stumped. We'd been sitting on a hill overlooking the Wild Basin for an hour, having a lovely conversation and listening to some music from the battery-operated jam box sitting behind us. "What's stupid?" I asked. There was still a slight chill in the air, although it was an evening in mid-April in Austin, a time when it could go either way, hot or cold. I had half a dozen goosebumps on my arms.
"Because I want to kiss you," he said. This, coming from my pal of 2 years, the guy upon whose shoulder I had cried several times, over some OTHER guy (or four). This guy who had platonically cooked me a lovely meal that evening, and taken me out for a drive into the hills to look at stars and hang out, talking about game theory and whatever else came up in conversation. The guy my friend Marni and I always thought would make someone such a nice husband someday. Just not us. Because he was just too nice.
I contemplated this for a second. It really wasn't much of a second, either. It was more of a frozen moment in time, in which God said, "Hey wait, Peter, hold up a second. I have to intervene in an issue on Earth. It'll just take a sec." He came down and saw that I was possibly in jeopardy of tossing away a FINE opportunity to live happily ever after, all because I was hopelessly attracted to the wrong type of guy (read: morose, artistic, abandoned by his mother or recent girlfriend, self-absorbed, unable to emotionally connect), and not attracted to the right kind (read: happy, cheerful, with a FUNCTIONAL family, lots of friends, and no blatant emotional issues). And that is when God, real quick-like, tossed a lightening bolt at me and went back to his conversation with Peter.
"Well, why don't you give it a shot?" I finally said. Something in me had clicked, and the thought of locking lips with this sweet, happy friend of mine didn't seem so bad. So he did. He wasn't the most experienced kisser, but his kiss was tender, and genuine, and respectful. "You could do that again, " I said. From that moment on, we were an item.
I remember driving home from his house he rented with some buddies, back to my apartment one night about two weeks later. It occurred to me on that drive that I fully expected I would marry him. I did marry him, about 2 1/2 years later. And that was over 10 years ago. White picket fence? Well, not exactly. There's one next door, however. But I am happy, I am fulfilled. I can pretty much guarantee that if that night hadn't happened, and I went about my business the way I had prior to this, I would not be in a happy relationship. I might be happy, but my guess is that I would be alone and happy.
The source of my previous attractions were always passionate guys. The type who would leave me thought-provoking, often sensual or dark poetry under my windshield wipers. Writers, artists, people with a deep, dark well worth of emotion that came out in usually very vibrant and beautiful ways. And I usually fell into the role of savior, voice of reason, rock of Gibraltar. But it was always about them. Their issues, their feelings, their inability to give back TO me as easily as they could take FROM me. My sympathy for their plight would make me reluctant to ask for what I needed, and I would feel empty and worthless when eventually the relationship would end. Maybe all of this is a function of being 20-23, but my guess is that these guys either got their asses kicked by someone with more issues than themselves, or they are still spiraling inward. I am a lucky one - I chose something greater than the raw passion, lust, and infatuation I experienced with these others. I chose to be with someone capable of being my FRIEND as much as my lover. The romantic part of our relationship is great, but it's not the center of it. We just enjoy each other's company and presence as companions, and that is the focal point for everything else. It's based on respect, and that flows outward into all the other aspects of our life together - parenting, working on our home together, traveling, arguing, being romantic, dealing with difficult family issues from time to time (my family, not his. Nothing about his family is difficult!). It doesn't have the peaks I experienced before, but it also doesn't have the devastating valleys either. Some would prefer to suffer with the valleys in order to get that euphoric high that can only come from the peaks. But I, on the other hand... I am so happy that I chose this type of relationship, one that is not volatile, where I do not question the future of it, or wonder why I put up with the things I do. I am blessed and lucky to have such a wonderful man as my husband. He is a great partner and wonderful father, a brilliant provider and supportive friend. And I thought I should write about him, since I haven't said much about him to date.

Mistaken

2006-10-16T15:24:00.000-06:00

It was 1988, the summer of my eighteenth year. The location: south of Salzburg, Austria, in the mountain village of Rauris. It had been a long day, traveling with my German host family from Nûrnberg down through southern Germany and northern Austria, on our way to Italy. Especially with multiple stops along the way for a brief walk, a nice lunch at an outdoor café in Salzburg, a quick trip into an especially characteristic Baroque church or exceptionally old museum or fortress. I was taking in the overwhelmingness of the architecture, the bloody AGE of everything, which was at least 500 years older than anything anywhere near where I lived. My senses were dulled by their constant assault, a breathtaking church here, a quaint babbling brook there, mountains and valleys and verdant green and luscious red and stark white and age-old gray. I was tired. Unable to find the hotel we had reserved in this tiny burg, we were taken in by an old farm woman for the night.
Erich and Ursula climbed the creaky stairs before us, honoring their cultural obligation to view the accommodations first and then proclaim them magnificent. With our belongings neatly arranged in a corner, we descended the old staircase into the foyer of the farmhouse. The woman, in her full skirts and kerchief, briefly came out. Erich asked where a hungry family might find a warm meal in the vicinity, and we were told we could go about 5 miles up into the hills on a winding road, and find a low-slung thatched roofed structure that is a pub and restaurant. Starving, we got into the car and headed up. It was getting close to twilight, and the sky was clear. The four of us walked in. First Erich and Ursula, they are both internists with a shared practice. He is Prussian, not typically German looking. Round, with a big belly built over the years from sausage and ice cream. Ursula has remained trim, impeccably dressed in only Jilsander, with silver hair cut in a professional bob. Christine, whom we all call Miki, goes next. She resembles her father, but with dark brown, thick, full hair, falling to her shoulder. Yet trim, like her mother. And then I brought up the rear. My hair was long, curly, and blonde. On my face sits a button nose at the end of an almost absent bridge, full lips, and graygreenblue eyes. Although I am short, I do not resemble these people at all.
We survey the room. On the left toward the back, three older women sit in a wooden nook booth, deep in conversation. They are not dressed modernly at all. Directly ahead, about four or five older men occupy a thick slab of a wooden table, smoking cigars and drinking frothy pints of various pale beers. In front of them is a game of some sort – cards or dominoes, I am not sure. On the right, at a cozy two-top, a couple in their mid-40’s dine quietly. There are a handful of other thick wooden slab tables in the room, and a long bar. Erich chooses a small table almost exactly in the center. He despises being seated near the kitchen, near the front door, near the restroom. He is equidistant from everything. We sit down.
A man in his late 40’s, maybe early 50’s brings us menus. We discuss the options on the menu and this dish that I cannot stand – it is meatloaf with a fried egg in the middle, that when cut into a meatloaf slab, looks like a big eyeball staring up from the plate. Eggs are vile, I say. Everyone laughs. We make our selections. To call the man who takes our order a waiter would be an insult. It seems to me that he owns this restaurant, or perhaps many in his family do. The other patrons all appear to be acquainted, in the way that most people in small towns at least in passing know each other. Everyone seems to take turns eavesdropping into our conversation or sneaking glances at us while continuing their activities. Fresh blood, fresh conversations in the room, fresh accents leaving everyone to wonder where we are from. Although we are conversing in German, it isn’t in Austrian dialect, so it is obvious we are foreigners. I feel like I’m keeping up with the conversation well, having spent four weeks with this family the previous summer, and having taken 3 years of German in high school.
I am answering one of Erich’s thousands of questions about my life. He never mentions America, just questions me about my school, my friends, my house. What’s it like? Erich is always curious to learn about everything. Miki is quiet, occasionally Ursula will interject a comment here and there. Most of our conversations consist of Erich either teaching me about whatever is around me, telling me stories about the war or his childhood or German history, or asking me questions about a fascinating place he has never visited, Texas.
As I am talking, the man brings our soup and drinks to the table. As we are in the thick of a conversation about something we have seen today, the man puts a hand on my shoulder and says, “You sound like you’re from the south.” He looks right at me. I am surprised, because I think he ought to be speaking to Erich. But he’s speaking to me. I am amazed that this man is able to know that I’m from the South when I’m a) speaking German and b) I have only lived in Texas at this point for about 3 years. Previously, I lived in Iowa, and I like to think I haven’t picked up much southern drawl. I say, “Yes, I am from the south. Austin.” He gives me a quizzical look. “Not familiar… what is it near?” I tell him “it’s right in the center. It’s the capital. South of Dallas…?” Still nothing. I say, “Surely, you have heard of Dallas, Texas. Television? Dallas?” He looks at me incredulously and says, “You’re from Texas? You’re American? I thought you were from Bavaria. Southern GERMANY. You do not sound American to me.” I tell him I am. “But you live in Germany now?” Nope. “Your parents are German and you spoke German in your family?” Nope. “HOW did I learn German, and especially without an American accent?” I tell him that I learned it in school and I mimic what I hear. Several others also comment, they cannot believe I am American. I do not look American. I do not sound American. I must have German heritage. I tell them I have a grandmother who was born in America to emigrated German parents. Though I never knew her. She was dead long before my father met my mother. “Incredible,” they tell me. As though this is unheard of. They tell me they do not often meet Americans who speak German, let alone speak it well. I am beaming. Proudly. Because I have evidently mastered this language well enough to be mistaken for German. I am 12 shades of red and there is a smile on my face from one ear to the other.

Mother Guilt

2006-10-16T11:52:00.000-06:00

For some reason, I have this need to get this ugly chunk of coal out of my heart, which has been smoldering in the corner for about a year. I'm not sure what else to do with it aside from barfing it up onto the blogosphere, hoping for some cathartic release in the process.
I have this mother guilt. When I am maxed out on my ability to play with my child, I let her watch television. Not 8 hours a day, but probably 3 hours. Not consecutively, but split into chunks. I have done what I swore I would never do; I have allowed the television to serve as an electronic babysitter, when I need to get something else done that does not or cannot involve her (like showering, or cooking dinner). All that I have read suggests that television isn't good for small children. I could be risking her developing ADHD or associated attention-oriented problems. Yet, I am at a loss for what else to do.
I am introverted. When I was a child, I spent hours upon hours entertaining myself. Drawing, reading, playing with clay. Playing outside. Making forts for myself. I grew up with no siblings, and as a young child, few neighborhood friends. It wasn't a kid neighborhood, from age 2-9, before we moved to a new area. I like to entertain myself, but Hootie does not. From nearly the moment she awakens until she goes to bed, she asks me constantly to play with her. There are many activities I do enjoy doing with her - drawing, reading to her, playing with her playdoh (sense a theme?) and many others. We go to the park, play outside in the sandbox, and I get her involved in helping me with various chores around the house as well. What she wants to do more than anything, however, is pretend play - with her little figurines of Dora and Boots and Diego, and the various animals they can save and rescue. I have the patience to do this with her once or twice a day for about 10 minutes, until I am so bored my eyes roll back in my head. She wants to do this over and over, and I just don't have it in me.
She's going to be an only child, so there won't be another little sibling around for them to entertain each other. That leaves friends, and me. I have gotten her involved with preschool 3 mornings per week to get a lot of social interaction with her peers. We have other playdates with other friends too. But when we're at home, just the two of us, she doesn't much like to entertain herself; she wants to be interacting with me nearly all the time. I have no idea if this is normal, or if it is something she learned from the way I interacted with her as a baby. It's obviously a need I feel responsible for fulfilling, because it breaks her little heart when I tell her sometimes that I don't really want to play. Hence, the guilt. I don't know if a good mother is SUPPOSED to play with her child all day or if it's alright to say no, and let the chips fall where they may. I have tried to teach her HOW to play on her own, but the second I leave, she complains that she wants to do said activity WITH me. Not by herself. She claims in her drama queen way "I need someone to play with me! I'll be SO SAD if I have to play by myself!" and she'll run to her room, sit in her time-out chair, and sob. I feel like I must be cruel, the times I am just unable to continue playing for hours, given the heart-wrenching reaction I get from her.
Thoughts, anyone?

My Top 10 Favorite Things to Wear

2006-10-15T16:47:00.000-06:00

I have been so anticipating the imminent arrival of fall, that I have been going through my wardrobe in hopes that by staring at jeans and long sleeved things long enough, I might WILL it cold enough to wear them. Although it's not hot as the blazes anymore, it is far from COLD and I fear a few weeks at least remain before I can put on (and keep on) a pair of jeans all day. But it prompted me to write a post about my favorite things to wear. What are yours?

1. A recently acquired pair of wide-leg jean capris from Banana Republic:

2. A cross-front white yoga shirt with short sleeves

3. A medium earthy green Old Navy zip up sweatshirt, about 6 years old, tattered and holey

4. A new pair of brown cowboy boots! Rock!

5. A beautiful new pair of black Bandolinos, strappy and pointy toed and even comfortable.

6. My Simple Black Dress - open back, A-line

7. A cut-off pair of low-waisted black yoga pants

8. My red with wild white and green and blue and orange flowers capri pajama bottoms from Target (with whatever white tank top I can find)

9. A batik wrap-around skirt I got in Colorado this summer

10. A charcoal gray nubbly, chunky shrug sweater with big floppy wrists, which attaches in the center with a giant bronze safety pin

Fall Food

2006-10-15T09:40:00.000-06:00

Recently (last weekend, and last night) I got to do something I adore doing. In my newly renovated kitchen, I got to cook some delightful food, fall food, for guests. I usually steer away from recipes which take a little time during the week, usually due to the child requiring this or that, which takes me away from anything that calls for stirring frequently. But, since I had the husband around, I was able to make two delicious recipes, that I thought I would share.

Butternut Squash Lasagna
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 butternut squash (1 1/2 - 2 lbs) - peeled, seeded, cut into cubes
salt and pepper (I used sea salt and fresh ground white pepper)
1/2 c water
3 amaretti cookies, crumbled (hard to find these at a standard grocery - we have an Italian market nearby where I got mine, but anywhere with some sort of gourmet food works
1/4 c butter
1/4 c all-purpose flour (I used whole wheat flour and that tasted just fine)
3 1/2 c whole milk
Pinch of nutmeg
3/4 c lightly packed fresh basil leaves
12 no-boil lasagna noodles
2 1/2 c shredded mozzarella cheese
1/3 c grated Parmesan cheese

Heat oil in large skillet on med-high. When warmed up, add squash and toss. Sprinkle salt and pepper and toss. Add water, cover, simmer until tender, about 20 minutes. Cool, transfer squash to food processor. Add cookies and blend until smooth.
Melt butter in medium saucepan, medium heat. Add flour a bit at a time, whisk 1 minute, making a nice roux. Gradually add milk, whisking constantly. Boil over med-high heat. Reduce to medium and simmer until thicker, about 5 minutes. Whisk in nutmeg. Cool a bit, put 1/2 sauce in a blender. Add basil and blend smooth. Return sauce to sauce in pan and stir. Season with S&P.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rack in center. Lightly butter or spray 9x13 glass dish. Spread about 3/4 c sauce, and arrange 3 lasagna noodles. Spreadh 1/3 of the squash puree over noodles, sprinkle with 1/2 c mozzarella. Drizzle 1/2 c sauce over noodles and cheese. Repeat layers until out of noodles and sauce. Cover dish with foil, bake 40 minutes. Sprinkle rest of cheese and parmesan over the top. Continue baking uncovered until sauce is bubbly and top is golden brown, about 15 minutes. Let stand about 10 minutes before serving.

Butternut Squash Risotto
7 Tbsp unsalted butter
2 Tbsp minced fresh sage
6 c vegetable or chicken stock
2 c butternut squash puree (cube it, simmer with 1/2 c stock 20 minutes first)
2 Tbsp olive oil
2/3 c caramelized onions
2 c Arborio rice
1 tsp minced fresh rosemary
1/2 c dry white wine
1/2 c grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

In a small saucepan over medium heat, melt 4 Tbsp of the butter. Add 1 Tbsp of the sage and heat until the butter browns. Strain the butter into a small bowl and discard the sage. Cover the bowl to keep the butter warm. In a large saucepan over medium-high heat, whisk together the stock and squash puree. Bring just to a simmer, 8 to 10 minutes; maintain over low heat. In a large saucepan or risotto pan (if you have it; I don't) over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the caramelized onions and rice and stir until the grains are well coated with the oil and are nearly translucent with a white dot in the center, about 3 minutes. Stir in the remaining 1 Tbsp sage and the rosemary. Add the wine and stir until it is absorbed. Add the simmering stock mixture a ladleful at a time, stirring frequently after each addition. Wait until the stock is almost completely absorbed before adding more. When the rice is tender to the bite but slightly firm in the center and looks creamy, after about 30 minutes, stir in the remaining 3 Tbsp butter, the cheese, salt and pepper. Add more stock if needed so the rice is thick and creamy. Let stand for 2 minutes. Drizzle with the reserved sage butter and serve immediately. Serves 6-8.

Sunday Morning

2006-10-15T08:01:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting still in my cool-from-the-air-conditioner front room. I have removed all the curtains for a quick trip to the dry cleaner, a task amongst many tasks I complete twice a year. Fall cleaning, if you will. The windows in this old house are tall and wide and low, giving me a very clear view of my front yard. The sky is a pale flat chrome color, the individuality of the clouds impossible to discern. Where the ground is normally dirt instead of grass, I can tell it is wet but not yet mud. The pampas grass in front of my window glistens with beads of moisture that have been silently wetting everything in the yard for about an hour. We won't be entertaining a gullywasher today; this will be a constant misting. The temperature outside doesn't necessarily warrant the air conditioner, but unfortunately, the humidity does. I don't care for my bed linens sticking to me.
In front of me, between the clicking clacking ringed fingers sits my steaming hot AOK steel-cut coffee mug containing a delightful sumatran blend from the best little coffee store in the world, Anderson's Coffee. With a little bit of non-fat creamer and Splenda. I might intellectually be a traditionalist, but my waist prefers the accommodations I am making towards its reduction.
In the front room, Hootie delights in watching a prerecorded episode of Babar, as she adores elephants. We were too busy up and out and doing yesterday, for her to watch it then. This is a treat. The husband lounges on the bed in the middle room, the boudoir, devouring and absorbing his weekend treat - stacks of the former week's Wall Street Journal. Somewhere in the kitchen a small container of scones beckons for me, but my stomach isn't yet ready. In a minute. I'm typing.
It will be a good morning, as all Sunday mornings are. With my child, my husband, my cozy house, and my elixir of life steaming mug in front of me. I am contented.

A Fate Worse Than Death?

2006-10-13T08:21:00.000-06:00

I just found out that a close friend of mine's mother has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease. They are Scottish, though my friend lives stateside with her American husband and their son. Her parents live over across the pond. All of them are such lovely people, funny and witty, with an occasional biting sense of humor, jovial and smart and kind. I have visited her parents several times, and see them nearly every time they come for a visit to Austin. My friend is very close to her mother, so you can imagine how completely stunned and fearful she is. It is devastating to know that what lies ahead of them will be so terribly difficult.
I have never had any direct involvement with Alzheimer's Disease in my life, but I can tell you, if there is one thing I fear most for myself, it would be such a diagnosis. Not only would I be terrified for myself, the thought of completely losing my memories and connection to the people and places and events of my life. But even moreso, the effect this would have on those around me who love me and interact with me. Especially my husband and child. The thought that one day I could look into their eyes without a glimmer of recognition would be heart-breaking to them. And, to eventually not even know who I am, or remember anything from moment to moment... horrifying. For those who have a loved one with Alzheimer's Disease, I can only imagine how it would feel to eventually need to hospitalize this person you adore, out of sheer exhaustion in caring for them, knowing they are alive but not with you, not really. Sitting in an institution, unaware of their own fate, yet still living and breathing. Those people who are able to mentally and psychologically take on the challenge of caring for a late-stage Alzheimer's victim are living angels with wings. I do not know if I personally could withstand the horror of it. And I feel if there were anything in my life which could ever make me think of committing suicide, a diagnosis such as this might be it. Not that I think anyone else OUGHT to do that, but I don't know that I could stand the thought of what I would be doing to my family.
According to statistics cited at the Alzheimer's Foundation website, patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's can live anywhere from 2 to 20 years with the diagnosis. It is the 7th leading cause of death in people older than 65. Given the age at which people are generally diagnosed with the disease, the statistics of mortality are likely consistent with a person that age's chances without the disease. The actual cause of death in Alzheimer's patients is, however, not the disease, but pneumonia. In a state of extreme dementia, patients can become ill and not ever get up from their beds, which causes pneumonia to set in and take over. Although there is no cure, there are about 5-6 medications which can slow and even in some cases reverse the damage which is done by Alzheimer's Disease. I pray to God that my friend's mother has a mild case, not very advanced, and that one of these drugs will be able to help her. I know very little at this point, we haven't discussed any of these details yet. My friend is understandably just in shock, and doesn't feel like talking about it yet. I know a day will come when she has grown accustomed to the knot in her belly and is able to maintain her composure to at least enough of a degree to discuss it. Right now, she's just hanging on by fingernails, trying to keep from going mental in front of her son, who would be freaked out by it.
Sigh. Heavy heart.

Childbirth

2006-10-12T17:20:00.000-06:00

For some cosmic alignment oriented reason, I have come across or have been told a number of birth stories recently, which always understandably brings up my own story, of giving birth to Hootie. While most of my women friends either had c-sections or an epidural, I have been hearing a lot lately about women who endured childbirth sans drug intervention. I hear their stories, and there's generally speaking a lot of grueling labor, a lot of intense pain, exhaustion, sweating profusely, and being extremely proud afterwards, for their gigantic balls of steel. I have zero doubt in my mind that ALL of these women, any of which have endured drug-free childbirth, have enormous huevos. They all have tolerated what I have heard to be the biggest pain on the planet, closely followed by the root canal. And to every single one of them, I say, "Wow. You have balls of steel."
But why do it? I have never understood this. I know it is an intensely personal decision, whether or not to be medicated while a bowling-ball sized being is shoved through an oriface on your body normally the size of an olive. But I'm really curious about why it is so important to women who choose this route?
Clearly, I didn't choose this route. I never once set out to choose it; I didn't have any idea what I would want until the time I was delivering Hootie. I left it completely open, to go whichever way I felt would be right. I had assurances from my OB and the anesthesiologist that an epidural would not harm my child. So I felt as though it would be safe to choose either way.
On the day my water broke, two days before my due date, I already knew I would need to be going to the hospital right away. I had tested positive for Strep B, which meant that while traveling through the birth canal, Hootie was at risk for getting some of these Strep B germs (harmless to me) in her lungs, which would be extremely dangerous for her. Therefore, I was to be on two bags of antibiotics prior to delivery to protect her. And since I had already been dilated to 3 cm and 90% effaced for several weeks prior to this, I knew I needed to go in pretty much right away.
So, at 4 am when the water broke, in classic gusher piles on the floor fashion on the way to the bathroom, I calmly woke my husband and my Mama, who was sleeping in our guestroom, telling them it was time to get ready to go. Labor started, though did not hurt. I drove us all to the hospital in our truck - my Mama couldn't really get in the back part of the cab due to her rheumatoid arthritis, and I wasn't sitting in the back; so I drove, Mama sat up front, and my husband sat in the back. We arrived, got me hooked up to all sorts of monitors. I could feel the contractions pretty well, having to breathe through them and all that you hear about how to manage contractions. Things went on this way for several hours, and though it wasn't comfortable, I could deal with it.
I had a tiny bit of pitosin when I sat at 6 cm for a little bit, and then things sped up. At about 7 cm, they were checking me and also told me that the anesthesiologist was in our area with the epidural cart, if we wanted to take advantage of it. The nurse added that it could be up to 45 minutes from the time I decide I need it after she leaves, until she is able to get back to my room to administer it. I thought about it. I wasn't in excruciating pain, but I was getting a bit tired, the contractions were close together, and I had no idea how much longer the process ahead of me would be. So I said sure, let's go for the epidural. The anesthesiologist was in and out in about 10 minutes. The hardest part was holding completely still during a contraction for her to inject the needle. It didn't hurt, especially compared to the contraction.
Within minutes, my legs were moveable but numb. I couldn't feel anything but tightening when I had contractions. My Mama took a nap, I took a nap, and we waited until I was dilated to a 10, which was about an hour or so later. We had the mood music going on in the background, the husband and Mama had gotten a bite to eat. Everyone was laughing and joking. It was an extremely mellow situation, nothing like what you see on television.
My nurse, Elise, was managing two rooms at the time. Another nurse came on duty, and she had to choose which room to work in. She chose ours, because there were a "lot of really fucking intense people in that other room!" and we, well, we were laughing and making faces at each other.
So about 2:00, I got checked again. Dilated to a 10. Ready to push. The OB was called, and the nurse set my husband and Mama each on one side of me, to help support my legs while I pushed. They'd wait for a contraction, tell me to push, tell me when to stop, and we'd wait for another one. My husband and my mother were really frigging proud of themselves, because for a while, the nurse left the room and let them manage it all on their own. Finally the OB came in, and Hootie was born at 3:11 pm. The way I felt about that child is a story unto itself, and not the subject of this post. But I can definitely say this... although I know I could have had balls of steel and gone through it without the epidural, it afforded me a calm yet exhilerated experience of giving birth to my daughter. I was thrilled, I wasn't in agonizing pain, and I had enough energy to enjoy the experience and the time afterwards in which I could feed her and look every little part of her over. And for that, I am grateful to the epidural.
It's every woman's call, and some are staunchly in favor of one path over the other, some with a very organic snobbery that I find off-putting at times. Life gives us a million opportunities to show our moxie, our character, and our gigantic balls of steel. In this case, I chose to enjoy labor and delivery instead of suffering through it. I don't deny anyone their pleasure in their decision, but at times I think it would be far more gracious if the earthy no-drugs mamas out there were able to afford me the same courtesy.

A Tale of Two Mothers, Part 2.

2006-10-11T10:33:00.000-06:00

So, who is this other mother? Well, if you want to be technical, she's a first cousin of my birth mother, on her maternal side. When my mother grew up, in the environs of San Diego, she was surrounded by the families of her mother's three sisters, and her grandparents. There were 10 children total, and they basically ran in and out of each other's homes as though they all lived in each and every one. There are 5 years difference between my Mother (elder) and my Mama (younger).
But I didn't grow up with any of these people (or anyone from my father's family either, for that matter). When I was about 2, my parents moved from Los Angeles to this very small town in Iowa, due to a job. I vaguely knew there was a large family in California that my mother came from, but the only people I ever saw were my mother's sister (and family), and occasionally, my grandmother. Due to various arrogances, misunderstandings, and intentional insults, my mother and her cousin C (my Mama) were not close. Not even really speaking, at the time of the move. C is a bit of a feisty one. Opinionated, not afraid of anyone, or afraid to speak her mind. My mother is much more of a conflict avoider; at least the conflict she generates isn't direct. So I knew very little about my mother's family. Over time, the family rumor mill and gossip network communicated bits and pieces I overheard while growing up. C and her mother were not on the best terms, C and her brother were not on the best of terms. C and several other family members weren't on good terms either. She had three daughters, the eldest one slightly younger than I, the other two in close proximity to each other. They lived in Denver, and eventually when C and her husband divorced, she and the girls moved to Washington (State).
Fast forward again, to about my 18th year. My maternal grandmother, who I had started at age 15 to develop an actual relationship with via the telephone, was hit by a car and died. At her memorial service, her sister, C's mother, was in attendance. She and I became fast friends. She was quirky, tall and thin, attractive, and spunky. And she took on the role of my Auntie Grandmother, being like a grandmother to me that I didn't really have. We'll call her NB. I visited her many times, and vice versa, and we communicated a lot in my early 20's. I heard all sorts of stories about how horrible her daughter was, how she kicked NB out of her life, how there were problems always of C's causing. How she'd callously mistreated her mother for years. Much of what was echoed throughout the rest of my family was similar, and I never came in contact with her to validate/verify any of this.
Until NB was diagnosed with untreatable liver and stomach cancer, likely metastasized from somewhere but unclear where, in the summer of 2001. C basically took complete care of her, much to her own detriment. C has the most aggressive case of rheumatoid arthritis I have ever heard of, and has suffered with it since age 37. So she's not in the best physical shape herself, and taking care of an ailing mother was not easy. When I found out about the cancer, I called C to see if there was anything I could do. I scheduled a long weekend visit to Washington to see NB, and the plan was for me to take care of her that weekend, giving C a much needed break. I called about every 3 days to see how things were going. Due to either dementia or the pain medications or both, NB was oftentimes delusional and erratic, making little sense. But she knew I was coming and was looking forward to seeing me.
When I arrived in Washington, I had no idea what I was going to find. Here was a woman I had heard little good about, yet I knew none of this from my own experiences. I knew that two of her daughters also no longer were in contact with her, and yet there was one who steadfastly remained by her side. There had to be another side to this story. So I went with an entirely open mind. C picked me up at the airport, and I knew her instantly. She resembled her mother enough for me to know which one she was. She took me to her house, and we were up until well after 1:30 in the morning, talking and getting to know each other. The next day, she drove me to where her mother was, at her apartment 45 minutes away, and left me there, to spend the weekend with her. Her estranged brother was to pick me up and take me to the airport on Sunday. What followed was a nightmare. The first 5 minutes with NB were fine, and then she went off on a tangent of illogical talk that I couldn't follow. Eventually she became paranoid that I was going to fill her apartment with people to host a party for her son, whose birthday it was that night. I had to stop her once from getting her keys and going to the car (she could no longer drive), and she went off on me as though I were the devil. I called her son, Mike, and he eventually came over that evening. He took me out to dinner, and when we returned to the apartment, NB went ballistic, screaming at Mike that she did not want me in her home, to get the hell out, and flew at me. He stopped her, and told to me to get my things, I could come home with him. I called C, she was not home. He called C's daughter, to let her know that this was happening, and she came to take care of the situation and calm NB down. I spent the rest of the weekend at Mike's house. That was the last I saw of NB. We did speak on the phone and she apologized profusely, but it was a traumatic experience to say the least. She died in November. I maintained close contact with C, talking for hours and hours at a time, throughout the ordeal, and afterwards. We had formed a fast friendship, and continued it.
Early the next year, C had to have spine surgery, due to a failed lumbar fusion. She was terrified, as this was a recurring problem she faced with this part of her body. I flew to Washington again, to be with her and spend a few days. I came back up later in the month and helped her with her recovery, and continued to visit many many times that year. In fact, I think I spent about 140 days out of the year with her. Yes, I still had a job at this time! I managed to work remotely for a good chunk of the time I was there, and kept the job. And, my loving husband refrained from either killing me or divorcing me, for which I am eternally grateful. 140 days is a long amount of time in a year to go without one's spouse. But, it was critical personal development, such that I feel I wouldn't be as good a person as I am today (though always a work in progress) without having gone through that and gotten my mothering needs fulfilled. I also got to know Mom's daughter, and we became as thick as thieves too. To the point that we're now better sisters than her original sisters have been to her.
Throughout the course of spending so much time together, Mama and I discovered how much we have in common. My eye color is exactly like hers, which is different from anyone else in my family. We just clicked and became so close, I felt more like she was the mother I was always destined to have, but somehow fate worked out differently. She felt this bond as strongly as I did, as though I were as much her child as any other she had borne, so eventually I started calling her Mama, and she started telling everyone she had four daughters. Her close friends got to know me too, and their initial skepticism subsided, and they now all welcome me as family. My sister and I couldn't be closer if were were born sisters, and many people say we look as though we were actual sisters. I love the two of them with all my heart, and feel as though I was meant to be a part of their family. And to explain my theory on how I ended up with my actual parents instead of this woman, is that my mama's womb was just busy at the time I was meant to be born, and my mother's was available; the closest genetic match to my Mama. And even though they didn't plan on getting pregnant, an opportunity arose, antibiotics, and God stepped in. Later in life, God brought Mama and my sister and me to each other to heal parts of us that were broken without the others. For Mom and my sister, losing contact and/or closeness with two daughters/sisters is a scar that never heals, and I hope I help with the pain of that. For me, having a mother who never provided me with the loving, nurturing, supportive environment I needed growing up caused a lot of emotional issues it has taken me the better part of my adulthood to unravel and rework to a point of health. And never having siblings - well, I think that this can work out positively or negatively, depending on the environment the parents create. And the nature of the siblings. I can't say that if I had any blood siblings, I would be any closer to them than my folks. But I wouldn't trade my sister for the world. Mom and my sister have helped tremendously with healing my brokenness, and I credit Mom with changing my view that if I had children, I would just fuck them up the way I was haplessly fucked up. I would pass all this garbage on, and I didn't want to do that. Now I am so grateful, that I listened to her, and I have my beautiful Hootie. Mama is a true grandma to her, is there for her and loves her unconditionally. They are my family, the one I always needed, and had to spend 31 years without.
So when I write about my Mama or Mom in Washington, that is her. When I write about my parents, in Nevada, that's who they are. They don't talk to each other, and my actual mother has felt extremely hurt and wounded at times by me having taken on a second mother. I tell her that I'm only getting things that I need in my life, things she isn't capable of giving me herself, and one isn't to the exclusion of the other. My lack of closeness to my actual mother has nothing to do with the existence of my Mama. And has everything to do with her own ability to be the other half of a nurturing, giving, supportive relationship.
So that's the story.

A Tale of Two Mothers, Part 1.

2006-10-11T08:20:00.000-06:00

I have two mothers.
No, I'm not the product of a lesbian relationship. It goes more like this.
I was born and raised by a man and a woman, who shall be referred to as my Dad and my Mother. They are still married. They do not live anywhere near me. My creation wasn't intentional - I was an "accident" - an "antibiotics" baby. But more on that theory later. I have no official siblings from these parents. I didn't have a hideous childhood, but the relationship between me and them is fraught with issues. It always has been this way, if you looked at it honestly. I spent many, many years overcompensating for these issues, to my own detriment. I don't do that now.
My father is a recovering alcoholic. He has not consumed any alcohol in all my 36 years of life, to my knowledge. When I was growing up, he was working, traveling for work, or busy working on something at the house, some woodwork or home improvement project or whatever. He's a worker. He's a quiet guy, not the life of the party, not the funny man. He's a loyal friend, almost to a fault, and expects the same rigid loyalty from everyone in his inner circle. If you say you are going to do something, by GOD, you do it, come blizzard (he walked 2 miles in one to get to a friend's house he promised to help move, when his car couldn't get out of the driveway), or any other potential obstacle. My father was rarely ever the disciplinarian in the house, but when his voice was raised, you'd best be at attention.
The first thing I should mention about my mother is that she has bipolar disorder. But it doesn't manifest itself in the manic way that we read about in extreme stories of people thinking they are the second coming of Jesus Christ, or they jet off to Washington to save the whales in Congress, or go on a shopping spree to end all shopping sprees. She obsessively did needlework. The other times, when she wasn't in this OCD needlework frenzy, she was depressed. I'm sure there were times which were more even keeled, but in those days, she was entirely undiagnosed, unmedicated, and untherapized. My memory of a lot of that is foggy. I know she didn't play with me, other than an occasional game of cards, and I grew up with a sort of apathy toward her. I didn't hate her, I didn't "love" her, I just lived with her. We had lots of bad moments, in which her depression turned ugly, and many times turned ugly toward me. Many kids grow up shouldering the responsibility for causing depression in depressed parents, but somehow, through what I like to think of as the grace of God, I did not. I remember around age 9-10, it was Christmas. It was snowy (we lived in Iowa), and dark outside. Christmas Day. My mother was in a depressed funk, initiated by I don't remember what. I bundled up, and went walking outside, down to the cul-de-sac ending which had no houses built. On the border of a cornfield. I sat for an hour or better, being aware that something wasn't right about how our Christmas was going. Having my mother sleeping all day in her bedroom, or crying, was not the way it was supposed to be. But I knew I didn't cause it. I knew it was her. Perhaps that is where the apathy came from - if I let myself get sucked in and too involved with her depression, trying to fix it, it might destroy me too.
I wasn't physically abused, but I went through some episodes of some pretty harsh verbal and emotional abuse. My father was aware, in a guy sort of way, that this was going on, but tried to ignore a lot of it, and didn't really think there was much to be done about it. When I would be excessively punished for some fault or other by my mother, he would generally reduce the sentence upon returning home. I was mouthy, I talked back. I played her sometimes, knowing I was right, she was irrational, and would dig my hole as deep as I could, just to see how deep it could go, over an infraction like not wiping down the baseboards under the cabinets when mopping. She claims she knew she was doing wrong, she just didn't know how not to do it, and frankly didn't really try.
Fast forward. I grew up. My mother went through a major depressive episode and was hospitalized for 3 weeks. She went through some intensive therapy then, but still thought she had just chronic depression (who knows, maybe that is actually what she has, I don't know). In the middle of her doing so, I was going to college, trying to figure out who I was, what I wanted in MY life, instead of trying to be whatever my parents needed at the time, or thought I ought to be. I wasn't into figuring out my relationship with them through counseling. I had had enough of all that. Eventually she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and has been on various medications since then, with periodic success. From what she tells me, things will be working fine, and then they will stop working. She'll go to the shrink, get on something else, go through a period in which she feels like crap, until the new medications take hold and help out. In a desperate attempt to keep me somehow close, to validate her existence, for me to try and make her feel better, she and my father did a lot of "strings attached" things to lure me to their house, and keep me around as long as possible, get me to help with this or that as much as possible, with the implications that I owed them.
Eventually, my mother tried to kill herself, twice. Evidently she didn't try very hard, as she wasn't successful. I doubt she took as many pills as she claimed she did, as both doses would have been lethal. The first time, she claimed that she did not want to go on vacation in the travel trailer my father had pushed for them to purchase, to enjoy the country in their retirement. She took them one night, went to bed. Was still asleep when my father got up and went to his part time woodworking job the next morning. When he tried to phone around noon, and she didn't answer, he became worried. He went home, found her stumbling around in a stupor in the house. He called me at work and I went right over. I got her dressed and into the car, and we took her to the ER. The drugs had been in her system for so long, a stomach pump would have done nothing. They did give her charcoal to absorb whatever it could, and then checked her into an institution overnight. Needless to say, that was bogus, did nothing for her but keep her from hurting herself. She recovered and continued on with her medication and doctors. The second time she tried to kill herself, it was because my father had had a very close brush with fatality, falling asleep at the wheel on a drive to Houston. He totalled their SUV, but was basically unhurt himself. She didn't want to face possibly living entirely alone, and tried the pill route again. I was in Atlanta on business, my father found her and took her to the ER. The shrink there at the hospital agreed to see her professionally and they went home. She hasn't tried since, but continues on her rollercoaster.
I realize that my mother has a big struggle on her hands, with this disorder/disease. It's not her fault she has it, and it must be hell. I thank God I didn't inherit it. I do not blame her anymore for the things that happened in my childhood, as I know she didn't even know what she was doing or how not to do it. The thing that bothers me is that there are parts of a person's behavior which are due to illness, and parts which are personality flaws. And when a depressive person is not feeling bad, and regulated with medication, it ought to be that they can carry on normal relationships. They deserve some wide berth when they are struggling and not feeling well. But there ought to be times in which they do things while not depressed, for which they ought to be responsible. Even those things done while depressed - ultimately they are still responsible for their actions. And my mother claims zero responsibility for herself, for her actions. It is all the bipolar disorder. It's never HER, she can never be asked to not do something unhealthy, to not lie to me, to not attempt to emotionally manipulate and blackmail me. I see right through it. It's a crutch, this bipolar disorder. It's got to be hell, but it ain't no picnic for the rest of us either.
As a result, I have an arm's length relationship with my folks. I never shut the door to them, I never have cut them out of my life. But, I do not let them cross my boundaries anymore. I had to set the relationship aside for a few months about 5 years back, in order to establish what the boundaries were, but I did it, and came back, and told them what it was to be. Of course, you can imagine their devastation, upon hearing how callous and self-absorbed I needed to be, for my own mental health. But I have been so much happier as a result of doing that.
Part two, soon to follow. About my other mother. Who shall be called Mama.

Another Annoying Form of Ignorance

2006-10-10T08:30:00.000-06:00

This is my adorable nephew Zachary. Note... he has curly hair. OH MY GOD, there's a LITTLE BOY that has curly hair? IT CAN'T BE! Somehow, the majority of people who interact with my sister at various shops and stores where they live comment to her, "Oh, she's a beautiful child, look at her curly hair!" My sister is all, "Uh, that would be HE. I know it's difficult to imagine a boy with curly hair, for God's sake, but he's got it. And you probably missed the fact that he's wearing all blue and green and orange, with trucks or footballs or cars or trains or dinosaurs or other boy-related paraphernalia on his clothing... but actually, he's a boy." And people are shocked. "I just thought, with all that curly hair... he was a girl."
I had this mistaken gender issue happen SO often when Hootie was a baby. Like 2:1, people thought she was a boy. Now, I am not the kind of mother who dressed her daughter in all pink and ruffles and those funky little lacy headbands or scotch-taped a bow to her head. So on days when my child was dressed in something you could only describe as "unisex", it stands to reason that the populus at large could take a 50/50 stab and think she might have been male. But when she's dressed head to toe in pink? Or when she's got two little pony tails sticking up off the sides of her head like Shrek ears, with little ribbons on them? HOW can a person say, "HE's so cute?!" It is a stretch, I know, to assume that just because her darling little face is so delicate and feminine, that everyone else can see that and surmise she's female. I know I have never mistakenly called a male child female or vice versa, so I know it is possible to deduce this by looking at their little faces. But in the event that a person isn't on the same wavelength that gives me this ability, HOLY COW PEOPLE, LOOK AT THE CHILD'S CLOTHING! And if it is still somewhat ambiguous, tell the parent, "You have a darling baby" or "Your child is just precious!" You don't have to associate a gender to such a comment!
I have to assume it is just another annoying form of ignorance, that goes along with other forms of ignorance when random strangers try and interact with children they do not know. Like when people go to touch the baby. HELLO, that is RUDE. Generally speaking, I don't go up to other people's children and TOUCH them. That is an invasion of that child's space. Or, people coming straight at me with their hand to touch my belly when I was pregnant. I thought I was a lumbering ox those last few months, but come at me with your hand, you stranger, and I'll show you how fast I can move! I cannot tell you how many bullets I dodged in that arena, and how many times I had to tell people, "I am guessing you meant no harm, but it JUST isn't appropriate to attempt to touch a person's belly that you do not know, without permission." And people generally get OFFENDED by comments such as this. As though I am supposed to just endure this, for fear of hurting their feelings. What about MY feelings?

Yoga

2006-10-08T14:12:00.000-06:00

So, I'm not in most ways a person who embodies anything else one might think of in connection with the practice of yoga. I do not wear Patchouli, I do not look for the energy in a crystal, I don't have a Buddha in my home or practice anything associated with feng shui. In fact, my house looks more like Country Home Meets Pottery Barn with a little Vintage Flair or Antique Whimsy. But that does not mean I do not fully embrace the practice of yoga.
It's only been about 9 months since I began practicing yoga, at a little studio near my house, about 5 blocks away. Definitely walking distance. I had been fascinated and drawn to it for years, but always had my reasons not to try it. It was too expensive, previous studios I heard about were too far away, and I didn't want to be part of a "yoga farm" where they churn people in and out of multiple classes at a time, in a day. I wasn't sure about Bikram yoga, where they turn up the heater and make you sweat out every last ounce of fluid - I can do that in my front yard in August with a pair of pruning shears and my unruly trees and rosemary bush, thanks. I didn't really want to look at yoga as an "exercise class." But the little tiny studio near me opened nearly a year ago, and at the beginning of the year, I decided to try out a basic yoga class. I was mesmerized and immediately bought my first 10-class card.
During my daughter's first 4 months of life, she practically lived perched up on my right shoulder. This was about the only position in which she would not be howling, due to what I chalked up to colic. This jacked my shoulder way the hell up. Genetics works in my disfavor, as both of my parents are prone to and have developed tendonitis in various joints. Basically, I have calcium sitting on a tendon in my shoulder, put there by my ever-so-thoughtful body in a masochistic attempt to heal the tendon, which does the exact opposite, and frays it with each use. Some bodies reabsorb the calcium, some do not. Mine appears to not be absorbing. I'm full up on calcium, thanks. Basically, this manifests itself as annoying aching, sometimes sharp pains, and limited range of motion. If I stay on ibuprofen 24/7, I can barely tell that this pain is there (unless I put the arm/shoulder in an egregious position, then I can tell REAL well). My next step will be surgery, as cortisone injections failed to help. But I am not ready to be having surgery yet. The kicker for me will be if I ever use my shoulder as a reason I cannot DO something, then it is time to go under the laser. LA-ser (said Austin Powers style).
Yoga has helped my shoulder tremendously. Not only is my range of motion vastly improved, but when I regularly practice yoga, the pain is also significantly reduced or non-existent. When I am out of town or sick and cannot practice, I can feel it within a few days. So this is one very beneficial side-effect of the yoga for me. But, not the leading one.
Yoga stills my mind. I always tried to meditate when I was younger - sitting still, trying in my very A-type personality way to de-clutter my mind. I would look for the sorting bins, sort out my thoughts, try to put them away in neat little file folders in the huge library of my mind. Picture myself sitting still on a beach, listening to the waves crash in. I always failed. A thought would come to my mind - something completely and utterly irrelevant and usually ridiculous - and I would chastise myself for allowing new thoughts in. But through yoga, I have learned to just observe my thoughts as they pass by, not giving them much credence, not investing myself in any of them. In fact, everything is viewed through the lense of curiosity and observation. Observe the body in twisted contorted position A, observe how the muscles tighten up to maintain balance, observe how this body senses pain in the shoulder or groin or calf. Be curious about it, but try not to let it gain control. Respect the edge of the tension and pain, push slightly past the edge. Pull back if the body starts to shake. It is hard to sit and plan dinner or rehash a failed conversation or worry about the myriad of things I might worry about when your left leg is wrapped entirely around your right leg, your arms are intertwined like rope, extended toward the sky, you are trying to maintain balance and look at the celing and deepen the pose every few exhalations. Each pose requires deep concentration, focus, balance, effort and release.
And what's more, I'm not in a yoga farm. I practice with a brilliant American man, whose life has become the practice and teaching of yoga. He is Buddhist, but aware that other spiritual concepts cooperate with Buddhism and/or yoga effectively. He's taught in inner-city youth prisons in NYC, but returned to Texas where his roots are, his family lives. It's a modest little studio, with a few classes per day, a few types - Vinyasa, Hatha, Mixed, and Basic. He knows who I am, he knows how to assist me in deepening into poses, or modifying poses to address my problematic shoulder. The music he chooses isn't random; it all facilitates the differing stages of practice going on at the time. It's simply fantastic, and provides the individual and group experience that encourages me to keep coming.
For 90 minutes, I am absorbed in the attempting to achieve random poses. My body benefits, but my mind benefits more. I leave calm, clear, and peaceful. What a delightful thing, this yoga.

Blown Away

2006-10-04T21:12:00.000-06:00

Early this morning around 3am, I awoke to a soft little "Mommy? Mommy?" from the other room. Hootie sleeps through the night about half the time, and the rest of the time something wakes her up. Sometimes she gets herself back to sleep without intervention, and sometimes I need to go do something to help her along her way. She's never been a "good sleeper" in all her 3 years and 3 months, but with every child come the challenges and the surprises along with all the wonderfulness of them. She never once vomited on me and she never drooled at ALL. And I truly feel blessed, as those two things probably would have done me and my anal retentive self in. But sleep.... that's a far more complicated issue. It started with 4 months of colic, of walking back and forth in my tiny house, with my child perched up on my right shoulder, and it just barely got better. We did not go the "co-sleeping"/family bed route, not because we're cold hard heartless parents, but because even when I tried letting the child sleep with me, I was completely and utterly unable to sleep with her next to me. I listened to every flutter of her eyelids, every hint of a sound she ever made. Was she breathing? Was she stirring? Was she about to open up the gaping yaw that is her mouth and howl imminently? I was too on the edge, too afraid to wake her, or too expectant that she would suddenly awaken, that I never slept. So, we decided she would sleep in the crib, in the room directly next to ours. We even shared a common wall, her crib on one side, the head of our bed on the other. And the wall/door between us made it just slightly more possible that I could ignore some of her sounds enough to actually sleep. Many, many times I have woken up, and the only movement I have made is to maybe open one eyeball. And within 30 seconds, the child has woken up crying, and I've gotten up to handle something in the night. But ever since she was about 2, she's been trying like hell to be allowed, without special privilege, without argument, to be able to sleep next to me. And on occasion, like when she is sick and awakens every 30 minutes, or when she's going through a rough transition like first attending pre-school, or on vacation... she's been allowed to sleep with me, for the peace, tranquility, and overall mental health of the entire family. Because this child has an iron will, and she will make it painful and without sleep if she is not satisfied. Believe you me, we've done many a "tough love" evening, with crying and screaming and pleading and cajoling and all manner of different mind-altering tricks coming from her tiny 30 lb body. And eventually she exhausts herself and falls asleep. But I digress. The point is, waking up at 3am is not uncommon for me. Not at ALL.
So, I got up, went to her bedroom. She said, "Mommy..." and pointed to her pajama bottoms. They were a little wet - she had had a tiny accident, I think maybe her second one in the middle of the night since she potty trained herself about 4 1/2 months ago. It's not like this has happened much, and luckily, the bed and covers were all dry. I took the pajamas and her little panties off, and laid them on her clothes hamper to dry, and got her fresh, dry ones. I said, "It's okay, Hootie. Sometimes it happens. C'mon, sweet pea, let's go potty." Took her in the darkness to the bathroom, she sat down and went potty while I sat on the edge of the bathtub next to her and smoothed her hair. And then in the darkness, with just moonlight coming in through the window, she looked at me and said, "Mommy, thank you for always taking care of everything for me. I love you."
This child is barely 3. I was blown away. Below is her self portrait.

Travels Afar and Ago, and Maybe Again

2006-10-01T21:07:00.000-06:00

There is one thing in my life that I am confident I did right. Right for me, anyway. Without hesitation. I had the forethought, at a young age, to know that I would want to do a lot of traveling in my youth, in the days with no obligations, before life got complicated. I didn't know at the time that my life wasn't complicated, I just knew I wanted... I needed to travel. And so I did.
The only unfortunate part of the traveling during this time in my life was the fact that I mainly traveled in Europe. I have many friends who have done the Australian-esque World Tour, taking 8-10 months and going every-major-where in the world. Instead, I covered Europe fairly exhaustively in 11 different trips. There are many, many places in the world I still wish to visit, and I think living more of my life and exploring different interests as they grow in me piques interest in visiting more places. Maybe by the time I visit otherwheres, I will have the maturity and informational reading behind me to truly appreciate them in a way I would not have at 18-31.
My interest started as a 14 year old girl, when a single woman and her son ended up placed with my family as a last minute fill-in for another family who had a sudden illness, in a program called "The Friendship Force". It wasn't really an exhange, as much as it was just American families hosting another family from a different country for a week. This woman and her son were German, from Berlin. I fell in love instantly - with them, with their culture, their language. I voraciously consumed tapes and books to try and teach myself German until I was able to take it in high school. I absorbed language like a sponge. And I convinced my parents to go visiting two years later. It was a really dull trip in retrospect - I was so green, so blissfully naive and not even terribly observant. But I knew Germany was a beautiful place, and understood how so many fairy tales could be set in such an idyllic place as the Black Forest. My sharpest memories of the trip were of constant parental bickering and fighting over driving in a foreign country, and the introduction to a spirit that I couldn't even remotely appreciate at the time, a drink known as the "Feige Sau" which translates to "Scared Pig". It's basically a martini glass holding a fresh fig, surrounded by ice cold vodka, topped with whipped cream. Delightful today, hideous at age 16.
Many of the other trips I have taken are fairly uneventful. I did spend the summer after graduation over in Europe "by myself" - hanging out with the family I stayed with the previous year when I won a scholarship trip because of my performance on the National German Exam. That trip was remarkable because my German friend Miki and I spent 3 weeks in Cambridge, England. She went to learn English as a second language, and I tagged along. I mostly spent my days drawing the breathtakingly beautiful bridges that span the River Cam; anything to get out of the shithole that was the Cambridge YMCA. We were so disgusted by the place, the filthy hygiene habits of the many Middle Easterners who occupied the building with us, the rudeness of the staff and other guests, that we clogged as many toilets as we could with toilet paper the morning we left. [Shudder].
Another remarkable memory from that trip was traveling with Miki's family into Italy for 10 days. We drove down from Germany through Austria and into northern Italy. Austria managed to amaze me even beyond the Black Forest of Germany in stunning beauty. We stopped in this tiny village named Rauris, in theory to stay at a small hotel Miki's father had reserved. When we couldn't locate it, a local told us it had closed down, and invited us to stay at their farmhouse for the night. This farmhouse was built in 950-something, solid wood beams the size of my waist. We were in the upper story, Miki's parents in one room, and Miki and I shared another. The windows opened out onto grassy hills with mountains in the backdrop. The bed was something out of another era - a feather bed with antique linens and beautiful embroidery. I had one of the best nights' sleep I have ever had in my life. I awoke around 2 am to the sound of something going on outside - I stuck my head out of the wooden shuttered window to see a young man loading full tin milk canisters onto his truck, leaving empty ones behind for the farmer's wife to fill with cow milk the next morning. He said hello and wished me a good night's sleep and safe travels (word must travel fast in a little town when foreigners are about) and went on his way. The next morning we came down to a full farm breakfast - slabs of fresh meat, cheese, the most amazing rolls, homemade jam and butter... everything was beyond incredible.
In Italy, we stayed in an old Italian villa outside of Florence in the Tuscan hills. We were surrounded by olive and citrus trees. The little apartment we occupied had beautiful high ceilings with embossed tin squares on it, and quirky, lumpy old beds. But the grounds were spectacular. There was a pool surrounded by evergreen trees, and a stone patio that held dinners for the entire villa three times per week. The evening meal extravaganza started around 9pm, went beyond midnight, and had no less than 5 courses. Appetizer, soup, salads, main entree, dessert. With wine and bread interspersed throughout. The best wine you can even imagine, and nothing you could ever purchase. Just locally made wines, chianti style, no label on the bottles. Usually the salad course included several dishes, like white beans or some variety of lettuce with a drizzled fresh olive oil and vinegar atop it. The pasta was beyond compare, so simple and fresh. We took walks and day trips to other unknown, entirely too quaint villages in the area, and steered mostly clear of the bigger cities. It gave me a much better understanding of how delightful a simple life can be. Utterly delightful.
Other trips I have taken have been much more exciting. I have been to Europe at some of the poorest times in my life and managed to squeak by on less than $50/day for all expenses. I wanted to travel so badly, I ate a lot of Top Ramen and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in order to save as much money as I could to get there. And at the time I did the bulk of my backpacking across Europe, I was able to quit one job and stay as long as I could, and return to something else.
I went for all of October and November of 1992 with a girlfriend, Marni. We started in England, and this was where I learned about the joy of the backpack. We brought rolling duffel bags. That lasted just until we could drag them to our hostel from Victoria Station. The next day we traveled to Cambridge and purchased matching backpacks from a hiking store. Ditched the rolling bags and half our shit, and were good to go. It probably rained on us every single day we were there. We went by ferry to France in the dark of night, tried to find a highly regarded hostel in Lille, France, only to discover by speaking with the wrecking ball driver that it was being torn down. We were chased by gypsies and German shepherds out of the area and had to walk several miles back to town. At this point we were so exhausted that we plunked down a credit card and bought a night's stay in a hotel with its own shower. On this same trip, we got stuck in Ventimiglia, Italy (the closest village to the French border) going from the Italian Riviera back into the South of France due to a train strike. We also plunked down the credit card and bought a night in a hotel, a big bottle of chianti, and a box of Ritz crackers. We ate our crackers and wine dinner on the rocks of a jetty by moonlight and nearly froze to death. It was so cold and wet and miserable. Later on this trip we took a midnight train to Barcelona, Spain. We had picked up a guy who lived in Austin at the time. He was an arrogant asshole, but Marni and he had some mutual acquaintences, and she liked him. The entire trip to Spain almost turned me off that wonderful country entirely, because not only did it rain the entire time, we had a bad meal in Barcelona and I had to travel with this putz. He got his though - he went into a store to purchase some kid cereal and sugar (quirky tastes, he had). He was so condescending to the clerk who was trying to understand what he was asking for, that he came home with a bag of salt instead of sugar (which I am sure was entirely intentional). I think I totally foamed my soda through my nose when he took his first bite. Karma, it's a bitch.
The day that Bill Clinton was first elected to office, we "celebrated" by eating at this amazing barbeque restaurant in an arrondissement in the south part of Paris. A crusty old black man from Seattle and his darling family opened this restaurant and served traditional Alabama barbeque with Heineken beer. We sat and listened to some bluegrass and jazz tunes, ate ourselves homesick, and thoroughly enjoyed our time.
Another trip to Europe I managed to go for free - my friend Dennis got a trip from his parents as a graduation present. And they agreed he could take one friend along as well. He chose me, due to my familiarity and language proficiency. We were only there 3 weeks, but that seemed like HIGH STYLE since we mostly stayed in Hotels. $200/day goes a lot farther, even with two people! I was lovesick, having JUST started dating my husband back then in May of 1993. He sent love letters along with me, for Dennis to hand out at various junctions along the way. We had a wonderful trip, getting stoned in Amsterdam at the Grasshopper Coffee Shop. Purple Sensi was the flavor of the day, and we drank gallons of fresh squeezed orange juice. It tasted amazing in the slow time of a marijuana haze.
My husband and I have been several times to Europe. The most remarkable was the trip in 1995 in which he proposed. We first went to London and traveled to Scotland, to visit my friend Judith in Glasgow, and stay with her parents. That entire trip was a booze frenzy, punctuated by fried fish and chips. GREAT time, that was. For 5 days we went from shopping to bars to parties to curry joints to beautiful hills in the country, to wonderful village restaurants. After going nuts for those days, we took a flight to Ireland. Once there, we consumed our weight in Guinness to recover. We made our way by train and bus to the west coast, just outside of the little town of Doolin. Doolin sits just north of the Cliffs of Moher, the sharpest drop off between land and water in the world. We were in a tiny B&B about 3 miles from Doolin, in the middle of absolutely nothing. It was fantastic. Little-traveled country roads and beautiful grassy fields with grazing sheep. We walked to the Cliffs, one morning, in the rain. Of course. It's June, it's Ireland. Once there, we walked up to the highest point, and my husband (who I had been dating for 2 1/2 years) started to tell me how much I mean to him, how he wants to spend the rest of his days with me. My raincoat was not waterproof (idiot) and all I wanted was a cup of hot tea under some cover. I kissed him, told him mid-sentence that yes, I would happily marry him, if we could just get out of the rain and get some tea! We walked back to the B&B after our hot tea, stopping at this delightful little country cottage restaurant called Nelly's Kitchen. It had an old stone hearth and fireplace, and the proprietors stoked the fire and gave us more hot tea to warm us up - we were about an hour earlier than dinner service, but we stayed and they treated us to an amazing dinner as congratulations on our engagement.
We have taken other trips, notably including Eastern Europe (Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary), and a week-long winefest in the Burgundy region of France. I cannot tell you how or why I remember a damn thing from that visit. I was completely inebriated the entire time. I developed a long-standing crush on creme brulee, making it my quest in life to find the best ever made. So far, my own recipe has not been beat by anyone other than possibly Daniel's Broiler in Bellevue, Washington. We drank some amazing wines at the Olivier LeFlaive winery, getting trashed and eating stinky cheese (Epoisses) for hours in the tasting room, chatting up the wine maker. I browsed the Paris Flea Markets, something I would LOVE TO DO AGAIN WITH MONEY. I didn't have much at the time. And what we had was blown entirely on wine. That we drug home. On our persons. And no, we didn't go through the "I have something to declare" line. We went balls out through the "Nothing to Declare" line. I was truly more worried about the unpasteurized French cheese in my bag than I was about the mere 22 bottles of wine we were carrying. Tja.
I haven't been since 2001, my last trip being with my husband's entire family to Portugal and Spain. My lord, I love those two countries as well. Never have I eaten so well, enjoyed the local culture (flamenco dancing in Madrid and Seville, not to mention the classical guitar at the out of the way joints in Madrid). Ahhhhhhh.
I could go on. But this is getting to the point of ridiculous in length. I cannot wait until my child is old enough to have some appreciation of Europe in order for us to go again. Maybe next year. A 4 year old can appreciate things, right?

All Kinds of Wrong

2006-09-26T16:02:00.000-06:00

THIS... I discovered online at Anthropologie.com. Normally I love their funky, albeit expensive things. But this is just uncalled for.
Do boots really NEED THEIR OWN LEGWARMERS? I say NOT.

Letting Them Fall

2006-09-25T20:23:00.000-06:00

Before I had a child, I was a serious eye-roller. It seemed that parents were either paranoid about their childrens' safety or completely oblivious to them altogether. Rarely did I see the happy medium, the perfect balance between smothering and ignoring. Either parents were not letting their children do ANYTHING themselves, or they were turning the kids out into the neighborhood, letting them run the streets in preschooler hooligan gangs. Unsupervised at the playgrounds near us, they guard the entrace to every slide like Jack and Roger in Lord of the Flies, and taunt the sweet little children too young to even understand what they were doing, not letting them go down the slide. Little Monsters at age 5, and without a parent in sight.
Then, I had my own. As anyone who has become a parent knows, there is no comparing how you feel about YOUR child to how you feel about everyone else's children, or children in general. I didn't particularly like children before having one. I liked (and loved) a few specific ones, but then I had Hootie. And the Sun Rises and Sets on Her Face. I have kissed and caressed and adored every little part of that sweet face, her edible little fingers and toes, her freckle on her kneecap, the veins you can see through the nearly translucent skin of her eyelids. I thoroughly love and cherish my child.
The first time (out of the hospital) where I saw blood come from my child's body due to an injury, my heart ACHED. It was truly nothing serious - Hootie was sticking her chubby little fingers into her Auntie Cat's mouth, and Auntie Cat was teasing her by nibbling on her fingers. Until she actually BIT her finger totally due to SPAZZING OUT. It barely broke the skin, but there was her blood. Hootie cried and cried for me, I scooped her up and washed her finger and put some ointment and a tiny little bandaid on it while my sister in law dug herself a hole in the living room floor and crawled inside. And every time since, every scrape or cut or big red knot on her head has hitched my heart like it was caught on a fishhook.
As a result, I'm probably classified as a Smotherer. I hate to see those big crocodile tears come out of my precious child's eyes. I am SURE that I help her do far too many things because I am afraid of her falling or hurting herself in some way (like the jungle gym at the park). It took forever before I would push her on the Big Girl Swings more than in about a 10 degree arc. But it has come to my attention that I need to back off and let the child TRY things, else she will never learn the consequences of gravity, learn to compensate for them, and develop her own sense of achievement and independence in the physical world.
So, my first attempt at this was to let her try to climb up the rock-climbing station at a playground at Amy's Ice Cream a few weeks ago. I know she'd never tried such a thing, and I was terrified to see her fall off something like that. But I sat in my rusty lawnchair, about 40 feet away from her, with her father giving me serious props for not hovering behind her in case she fell. She made it about half way up, going slowly and cautiously, but with a pretty decent natural talent with it. And then I heard the panicked little voice, "Mommy, I'm STUCK! I need your help!" My husband tried to stop me, to give her the chance to try and figure it out on her own. But I cannot ignore an honest plea from my child for help. So I went, but instead of scooping her up and putting her on top of where she wanted to go, I just grabbed her waist while she was still on the thing, and guided her up the rest of the steps, telling her where to place her feet and hands, until she made it to the top. And my husband actually did the little eye-roll.
Then last night, we were visiting friends for dinner. It was a delightful, cool evening and we were eating red snapper and grilled chicken outside. These friends have a darling boy 3 months older than Hootie (I'll call him W), and these children are best pals. His back yard has a wooden playscape with 3 swings attached, and the children were playing on the swings. Normally I am alright with swings at this point, especially as W was trying to teach Hootie how to pump her legs to get herself going, rather than constantly calling one of us to come push her. But then, he showed her how he likes to lie on his belly across the floppy rubber seat, and swing that way. This, too, was alright... until W RAN toward the seat and flung himself on it, and swung pretty high in the air. Before it even happened, I saw it in a mind flash, what was about to transpire. Hootie ran toward the swing, but overshot the seat and went flying over it, and onto her face, as it caught her at about the knee. I must have LEVITATED up and over that table, and ran to her. There was the sickening silent pause that always precedes a painful cry, when the wind is knocked out of them and they are taking in a breath to wail. I hate that total lack of sound. I got there to her as she just started her first wail. Her mouth was bloody and I couldn't see what all was going on in there. She cried, "Mommy, Mommy, my FACE hurts! My MOUTH hurts!" but she sat up on her own, so I knew her back wasn't injured. I scooped her up as my husband was saying, "Oh, Trasi, she's FINE" (until he saw all the blood). I got her to the bathroom and got a washcloth wet with some cold water, and wiped away the blood on her lips. I could tell her lip was cut in two places, probably from the upper teeth smashing into it. But it wasn't cut through the lip, thank God. I checked her teeth, and nothing was loose. Tongue wasn't cut either, luckily. All in all, there are now three big scabs on her bottom lip, it is swollen, and a bruise on her chin. It could have been so much worse, but it was bad enough for me to entirely lose my focus for the rest of the night. I hope for her sake, for the sake of me wanting to raise an independent, curious, adventurous child, that I don't stop letting her do things without me hovering over her. But GOD, IT IS HARD NOT TO! She'll just never learn how the world works, unless she's allowed to do at least a LITTLE bit of experimentation with its forces. But I had best steel myself, as I'm sure my heart hasn't seen the HALF of its future angst yet.

Prednisone, the verdict is still out

2006-09-24T07:16:00.000-06:00

Update, and for everyone's sake, probably my last, on the recent illness issue. Prednisone is responsible for me having gotten two good nights' sleep in a row, so it has a lot going for it in that arena alone. I am sure the antibiotics have also participated in this goodness.
However, it has made me one irritable bitch. I found myself biting my husband's head off, chewing it, and spitting it out yesterday morning over whether or not when I asked him if he saw the back bathroom light on and would he please not turn it off, did I mean EVER, or just that morning. See, my curling iron is plugged into an outlet that only works when the light is on. Therefore, leaving the light on is imperative if I want my curling iron to function. My husband is a habitual light turner offer, however, only in that room. Which has sparked many an irritated moment for me; just as I am about to go curl my hair, I discover that my curling iron is not in fact hot, due to the light being turned off. So he thought I meant don't EVER turn it off, while I actually meant, please not to turn it off in this instance. And his reply was, "no, I won't do that. It's a fire hazard." You would have thought this was a major issue, given the ire it inspired in me, frustrated with the miscommunication situation. That was my first clue something was amiss with the whole Prednisone thing.
Then later in the day, I was hanging out with Hootie on my own, as dear husband went to the UT/Iowa State football game with some friends. It seemed nearly every little thing that precious child did irritated the crap out of me, and I would feel my blood boil, as though I could just yell right at her at that moment, and I had to stop, count to 10, tell myself to chill out. Take a deep breath. Proceed. That strategy did work, but it confirmed in my mind that it's not JUST me having a bad day, there's really something different from my normal self. That is not something I usually experience unless I have had a seriously bad day, which all things considered, I hadn't had at all.
So I looked it up, and one of the first listed side effects of Prednisone is irritability.
I then proceeded to announce to all of my friends and loved ones that if I bite their heads off, get short with them, act like an idiot or am in some other way not myself over the next 3 days, please forgive me and let me know that I need to do a better job of controlling myself on this drug. At least I am aware of it and can manage myself... My mother laughed her fool head off. Prednisone makes her euphoric but some of the other things she's had to take in her lifetime don't have such a positive effect on her, so she well understands.
And, the quantity of green slime coming from my head has drastically decreased. Yay. But another lovely thing I discovered is that I will likely be on 3 different allergy medications for the rest of my life, every single day, as I am fully and completely allergic to Austin. And my allergist strongly recommends I start taking allergy shots pronto. The last time I was tested, earlier this year, I'm severely allergic to ragweed, marsh elder, cedar (which is the worst), oak, molds, and cats. That covers just about every single time of the year here. Right now, it's ragweed, which will slowly give way just as the cedar count is kicking up in November. It's a good damn thing I like living in Austin, else I would likely move the hell away from this allergy nightmare. The bright side? I am not allergic to my dog.

Thank God for Pharmaceuticals

2006-09-22T20:17:00.000-06:00

I have now been plied with a new 10-day series of antibiotics, and a 5-day series of 40mg Prednisone. This is the first time I have been on Prednisone, and I must say, it makes one a bit lightheaded, fuzzy, and slow. I know it can have weird effects on different people - depression, euphoria, lots of energy or weakness, increased appetite and weight gain (though unfortunately, not the opposite, sigh), but I'm only on a short dose of it to get my congestion under control while the antibiotics kick in. I'm praying for a good night's sleep tonight with the help of my friend Afrin, which the doc said I could use for another day or two, until the Prednisone does kick in (12-24 hours after the dose). Other than being exhausted, I had a pretty decent day, and now am ready to hit the sack. Wish me luck.

Pitiful

2006-09-22T07:26:00.000-06:00

So, basically I have been awake this morning since about 3:30 a.m. Why would that be? Oh, let me see. Perhaps it was because I CAN'T FRIGGING BREATHE.
Aside... I have sinus issues. I know it makes me a whining, pitiful wanker to go on about physical ailments. But this is my blog, so I shall write about it.
So anyway, my child contracted whatever it was before our trip, and she's (for the most part) back to good health. Minor coughing remains, as a slow trickle of clear fluid eeps down her throat on its way out of her system. Me, however, I'm a bloody mess.
I think I have now achieved the highest level of congestion I have ever achieved in my lifetime. BOTH nostrils are so completely clogged, I cannot breathe even a mere whiff of air through either one of them. Unless, UNLESS I am STANDING UP. Then, one will open enough to actually breathe out of it. As you can well imagine, that doesn't make for some easy sleeping! Maybe in college, while on one of my various trips in Europe by train, I could have slept standing up. NOT SO, post-pregnancy, at age 36. Try as I might, I cannot sleep with my mouth open. It becomes incredibly dry, my tongue sticks to my teeth, my lips get crusty, and inexplicably my mouth falls shut. Just when it does this, my body realizes it now has absolutely no orifice through which to draw in oxygen, and it freaks the hell out. My eyes slam open as I gasp for air, and then I get up, trying to blow the sorry excuse that is my nose. I have gone through two boxes of Kleenex in a short 2 1/2 days, and my nose is red and raw. You'd think that since I can get some stuff out of my nose that the congestion would clear up? Ah, not so lucky am I. I have a complete pharmacy at my disposal (sans antibiotics, sadly) to deal with my congestion, but NONE of the options have even touched my congestion. Not Sudafed, not Tavist D, not Tylenol Sinus and Severe Congestion, not Allerest.... I am forbidden by my allergist from using Afrin any further, as I already abused the 3-day rule on how long I can spray it up my nose, and it doesn't last more than about 2 hours anymore anyway.
So, I have been upright, pacing, walking outside, drinking water, trying to use my neti pot to clear things out (unsuccessfully, as no liquid can make its way through my ridiculous nose at this juncture), reading my favorite blogs' archives, trying to go back to bed, only to be thrown back into the vicious cycle of trying fruitlessly to breathe.
I am actually going to the allergist today, I have had this appointment since about 10 days ago, when I was away. I thought at the time, "no way will I still be sick 10 days from now". Thank God I kept the appointment, as I am now sicker than I was 10 days ago. I'm at 2 1/2 weeks of constant sickness now, and I think I'll go in with my harekare knife poised and ready to shove into my belly if my doctor cannot give me SOMEthing to relieve this infernal sinus infection.
I am now done ranting about my physical ailments. Carry on.

Blissful

2006-09-20T16:59:00.000-06:00

I love this child.

Out of the Mouths of Babes

2006-09-20T14:54:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I got out of my mother's car at the airport amidst a little Pacific Northwest drizzle and a healthy dose of "I'm gonna miss you" sadness. I had spent the last two weeks visiting, and nearly the entire time someone was sick. First, Hootie and I arrived with some upper respiratory funk (sinus infection? cold? flu?) and promptly got on antibiotics. Evidently we either caught a heinous strain of whatever it was, or it's viral, because the antibiotics didn't even touch it, and we're still hanging on to a bit of post nasal drip/cough. Then my poor sweet nephew Zakky caught something that started to resemble what we had (thick, green glop oozing from the nasal orifice and a pretty decent fever) but rapidly morphed into an ear infection and double pink eye on top of the nasty green slime. My sister caught something akin to all of this, with a sore throat and ear, and my new baby nephew Sam caught his first sickness at 5 months, including the pink eye and a wicked cough. Fate spared my mom the bacterial/viral heebyjeebies, but lashed out and gave her the achy/shaky/chills/nausea flu instead, for the last 5 days of our trip. I mean, really, WTF? We were all seriously bummed out that not once did we get together to barbeque and drink rum and cokes in the delightful Indian summer weather, not once did I even set foot into anything besides WalMart and Target, much less my favorite antique stores, and aside from doing a little shrubbery rearranging in my mom's yard, did very few of my typical helpful daughter chores. We did a lot of sitting around staring at each other, saying, "this sucks." Wanting to rent movies but going to bed at 8 pm. Avoiding the infectious pink eye and spraying Lysol or Clorox water on everything in sight. Of course, having a nice dose of Mom and sister time is worth it even if we're sick, but it still sucks to have had such high hopes for a visit, and have them fall soooo short of what we had wanted to achieve together.
With this weighing on our hearts, knowing I won't see my mom for another few months, I got out of the car and took the bags from the trunk. My usually stoic mother gave Hootie and me lots of extra hugs and kisses goodbye, and at the very end, started to cry. In years past, I was the crier, starting the gradual fattening of my eyelids and stuffing of my nose before we even left the driveway. My mother would always stoicly pat my leg, or hold my hand, and chatter on about something or other while I cried. But the last year or so, I have been able to keep busy with the toddler and avoid my own personal crying. BUT, not if my mother cries first. Which she did. GAH!
Seeing all this, my charming little BARELY 3 year old daughter comes over to me and says, "Mommy, don't cry! I know you will miss Moosie (what she calls my mother), but you always have ME!" Yep, if that ain't something to cheer up about, I don't know what is.

Fashion Disaster

2006-09-14T14:14:00.000-06:00

So, I have been away in another part of the country for a few weeks, and it takes leaving one's home sometimes to discover what all is going on in the world. And one big discovery I have come upon while away is that, not terribly surprising sequentially, the 80's followed the 70's. Now I am not really talking about how the 1970's and 1980's went in order just as a fun fact. I'm talking about fashion. We have had a nice, long run of the 70's in the fashion arena, with the bell-bottoms-renamed-flares, hip-huggers-renamed-ultra-low-rise, the wide collared, embroidered tops that go by the style name of "BOHO". All that takes a certain kind of individual to wear it well, and I'm not exactly one of them. But, I have truly taken a stab at it, and have gotten a bit used to it. I can do the wide legged pants, as they truly do make the legs look thinner and longer. I can hang with at least a below-the-waist pant, and I really love embroidered anything. Just as I'm becoming fashion-savvy, I read in the newspaper that we're standing at the front edge of a new era. The 80's are coming back, and WORSE than EVER. When I was in the 80's, I was a teenager. This was my very OWN era. But even I do not want to see leggings and leg-warmers return to the fashion scene. It's just NOT RIGHT, people. Leg warmers are for DANCERS, who live in ALASKA. They are not for girls in Texas to don over their leggings! Let's just pray that stirrup pants do NOT come back in style (ew!), and that sweatshirts maintain their collars, such that they do not need to be ripped and off the shoulder a la Flashdance. And tapered-leg pants? Hello? I see what Stacey on TLC's "What Not to Wear" has been saying all along, about tapered leg pants. They truly do look like you put a rubber band at the ankle and filled them with mashed potatoes. And polo shirts worn double, two different colors with the collars standing straight up, that is just hot, not to mention stupid. I only hope the mullet and mall bangs don't make a frightening revival as well. I think if this is truly the next fashion era, I want to go to sleep and wake up again in about 10 years. However, with Hootie in my life, I'm compelled to stay awake and make sure she doesn't get sucked into the vortex that was the 80's.

Nostalgia

2006-08-31T06:59:00.000-06:00

So I thought I would share my favorite picture of my daughter at age 6 weeks. She is now over 3, and we just managed to eliminate the majority of baby things from our home. The Diaper Champ, which I have loathed and dispised for 3 years, changing table mattress, the swing, the bouncy seat, the potty chair, and the child-carrying frame backpack. And while it is time for these things to go, since we are likely not having more children and our house is about the size of a large thimble, with them goes a little bit of nostalgia and sadness to see that wonderous phase of our lives conclude. It isn't that the time now is any less wonderful or I wish I could go back. I love right now, and strive to enjoy each moment of this time, too. It's noticing the passage of time, marked by the leaving behind of old things and ways, that makes me a bit misty. The time DOES go so fast, from when they are helpless and dependent to when they are empowered and capable. I think I'll let it sit on my mind, like a piece of dark chocolate on my tongue, until it melts away.

Theory on the Inherent Age of Men

2006-08-28T14:01:00.000-06:00

I have this theory. Most people who know me have heard me wax all philosophical about it (generally when drinking). It is simply this.
Women gradually grow more and more mature as they age. Some women experience a sort of second childhood at some point past 40, especially women who were unduly suppressed early on in their adulthood, women who had children extremely early and never got to naturally experience behaving like a juvenile, or those who went to Catholic school. But on the whole, women continue to grow and develop away from childhood as they get older.
But men? Men have a pre-programmed, built-in age. Each man's age is different. It isn't as though I believe all men are 14. Far from it. The world would REALLY SUCK if that were true, because NOBODY but other 14 year olds even LIKE boys when they are 14. And even that's questionable.
My husband is 8. And here is how I know. First, he owns no porn. Second, if given the choice to watch something on television, and one of the choices happens to be anything in space, no matter how HORRIBLY written it is (Andromeda?) or terribly contrived it is (Stargate?) or just plain campy (Star Trek?), he will sit, glued to the television, compelled to watch. Third, he still owns an old toy called an Armatron. You know, the thing with an arm like a crane that can be moved around to pick something up. And he WILL. NOT. GIVE. IT. UP. And finally, he still sleeps with a dilapidated feather pillow and rice-paper-thin sheet that used to be part of the bedding ensemble at his parents' beachhouse in the 70's when he was a child. The pattern has pink, blue, green, orange, yellow, and white stripes of varying widths. Gah, very hideous! This sheet/blanket set is SACRED and he prefers it not even be washed, for fear of losing one of the 4 remaining feathers inside the pillow. This man holds down a very respectable high-tech job and can talk politics or game theory while drinking scotch into the evening. But his core self... child. Each year on his birthday I ask if he's going to enjoy being 9 this year. He tells me I have it wrong. He is turning 8.
BUT, there are other men, and they exemplify other ages. Our friend Ken - he's really 14. Slightly awkward, a little bit goofy. At least USED to keep very soft magazine porn in the bathroom (before getting married, and I'm sssuuuuurrrreeee he doesn't anymore!). He's the kind of guy who would sit on your hand and fart on it, and think it hysterical. He's a computer geek and he plays drums in a band on the side. Also holds down a very important job, but inside, he is 14.
A guy I worked with a long time ago, (I'll call him Mac), he's 39 going on 17. Walks around the house with a pint of beer on his head, proving to everyone how studly he is for his beer balancing capabilities. He once engaged in a beer shooting contest against my dog. We poured a beer into the dog's bowl, and said GO!, and Mac chugged his beer whilst the dog lapped from the bowl to see who would finish first. The dog did, but it was a close race. Mac also really digs mean practical jokes. Like putting tuna fish into the ductwork of an enemy's house/office, replacing someone's hair conditioner with Nair, putting honey in the shampoo bottle. Just mean shit. And if there's an opportunity to ogle women, Mac is first in line.
Test it. Try it out. How old are the men in your life?!

Evidence that a Small Child Lives in My House

2006-08-28T13:40:00.000-06:00

If, when you entered my house, you somehow missed the Sesame Street playmat (covered in crayons and water color paints) draped over my rustic Mexican pine coffee table, or the Dora the Explorer plastic figurines on the couch, or the box of wooden blocks strewn in the middle of the living room floor, or the baby-sized hot pink yoga mat laid out neatly across the floor (next to the blocks), or the 872 black and white framed snapshots of my stunningly beautiful child, you might come across the realization as you went to do your business in my bathroom that perhaps, and this is ONLY A GUESS HERE, a small child lives in my house.

This is what you would see, as you were about to sit down on the toilet.

Now many grown adults can pull off keeping a giant rubber duck in their bathroom. It's a water area, people. Ducks love water. Fish love water. Bathrooms and water-motifs go together. And you might be suspicious of the enormous mesh bag full of other squeaky, water-squirting, brightly colored things hanging from the towel bar. But the toilet paper. The toilet paper is the dead give-away. I don't know any adults who have a hard time with the TP.
Trust me, although it's kinda weird the way the TP looks at this juncture, it is VASTLY improved from the situation in which the TP found itself last week. Which was either a) strewn on the floor in a wad, or b) sitting in entire-roll form, inside the toilet bowl. Soaking up ALL THE WATER. Ever pick up a roll of completely drenched TP? That stuff is made to disintigrate in water. Ew. That's all I'm saying.

Getting a Tattoo

2006-08-27T19:44:00.000-06:00

I don't know if it is because I live in the liberal oasis of Texas, so filled with alternative lifestyle that NOT having body art and piercings is actually abnormal, but I have always been fascinated with tattoos. I do not have one; I am a blank canvas. But... I am just SICKLY FASCINATED by seeing other people's tattoos. Sometimes I ask about them, what made people decide to have a giant fire breathing dragon emblazoned upon their backs (and did it hurt like a MOTHER having all that done!?). And then I wonder how they selected their desired location. At some point, with some people, it's hard to even find any more blank space upon which to tattoo. But those with one - why do they pick the spot they pick?
When I was about 21, working at an answering service, there was a girl slightly younger than me. I would have described her as very Dallas. Big hair, lots of makeup, the easy sorority type. Not your typical alternative, world-music listening, ring in the nose type. She got a tattoo on her ankle of the Tasmanian Devil. Hello?! When she is 80 years old and her ankle skin is sagging like sharpei flesh, the guy in the wheelchair next to her at the nursing home is going to look over at her ankle and think, "now how the hell do you take a woman seriously with a cartoon on her ankle?" Somehow, for me, it always comes down to how I'll feel about it when I'm 80.
And then there's my husband. Who is, shall we say... "personally conservative" (politically liberal). He's not a jewelry wearer. He has 5 total pairs of shoes, all very sensible and responsible. His clothing is basically a high quality set of Garanimals. Just about any top goes with just about any bottom. His color-blind self can't go wrong and I've saved myself the every-morning wake up question of, "does this go together?!" He is a wonderful man, but stylistically adventurous he is not. I, on the other hand, am especially a shoe whore. And a bit more alternative (evidenced by my 8 holes in my ears).
But I'm going to get a tattoo. I have decided upon my own artistic rendering of The Tree of Life, a symbolic representation of having given birth to my daughter, with her first and middle initial in the tree trunk, and her birthdate in the roots of the tree. Here's a drawing...

And now, the question is.... where to put it? I want to be able to wear a cocktail dress for formal work-oriented occasions, and not have my tattoo visible. Thoughts?

It's a Book Thing

2006-08-26T21:16:00.000-06:00

Well, I read an extremely literary-oriented post by Toasted Suzy this evening and she had this list of booky questions like one of those queer emails you get from people, where you list your answers to banal questions like chocolate or vanilla? What is in your CD player right now? Or, what is your favorite item of clothing? Except Suzy's questions were all very booky, and her answers were even bookier. Leading me to believe she's actually extremely brilliant and well-read. Which I am not. But I'm game for lists of any kind, usually.

So I will repeat the questions, and fill in some answers.

1. One book that changed my life...
An English/German dictionary. At age 14 we had a woman and her son from Berlin come spend a week with us in an exchange program. I decided to try and write letters to them in German, by buying an English/German dictionary. I communicated that way until I realized I really couldn't SPEAK German, I was just faking it. So I taught myself for a year, took German all through high school and college, eventually earning a degree in it, with minors in Russian and French, all because I realized I was really good at learning languages. I have traveled to Europe about 15 times and love it, as well as the study of language itself. Oh where would I be today if I had not done that? Well, I wouldn't be a doctor. The sight of blood makes me want to vomit.

2. One book I have read more than once.
Rarely do I read a book more than one time. I can watch a movie multiple times, but I am not a repeat book reader typically. A few exceptions exist though... One of which is Chocolat. SUCH a touching little story. Makes me want to go to France and find a darling little shopfront and open a chocolate store. Mmmmm. Darrrrkkkk chocolate......

3. One book I would want on a desert island...
Well, it depends on how long I was to be on that desert island. If I am going to be there for eternity, I want a damn long book. If it is just a weekend, I'm game for some homey mags (Real Simple, Country Home, Cottage Living) and a Sudoku puzzle book.

4. One book that made me laugh.
Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. That is some FUNNY SHIT.

5. One book that made me cry.
OHMYGOD, that would be Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Hands DOWN. Heart wrenchingly sad, pitiful even. I was sobbing so hard I couldn't focus my eyes anymore. Gah.

6. One book I wish had been written.
I do not even know how to answer this question. If I felt like I had something to say that would make some money I'd write one. But I tend to be much more creative with paint or a pen full of India ink.

7. One book I wish had never been written.
I would have to say A Million Little Pieces by James Frey because I read it before all the hubbub about how he made the majority of it up, and I actually believed him, and fell for his MEMOIR (my ASS!), and thought how SUCK it was that Lily died 3 days before he got out of jail, and why couldn't she just hold on? AND THERE WAS NEVER ANY LILY! Any book that makes me feel like a stupid idiot should not have been written.

8. One book I am currently reading.
I am also in between books at the moment. I think the last book I read was maybe The Nanny Diaries and it was alright. Not ever to make my Best Of list, but it was okay. I am on the edge of reading something new soon though. Maybe some C. S. Lewis.

9. One book I have been meaning to read.
My mother in law cannot say enough good things about Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat. I also caught an interview of Tom Friedman on PBS recently, and the man seems to know his shit. I have been wanting to read something a bit more relevant and non-fictional.

10. Tag Five People.
I'm not a tagger. If you read my blog, which ought to be....oh.... maybe 3 whole people including me.... do the list on your site.

Guilt-motivated Cleaning

2006-08-26T14:48:00.000-06:00

So yeah. I just thoroughly cleaned the car. Including waxing. I am vindicated.

Vehicular Hygiene

2006-08-26T12:43:00.000-06:00

So now, ON WITH THE RANDOMNESS. Which is what we all really want, isn't it? To be able to write about random things and have other people comment about it? Good. I'm glad we cleared that up.
WTF with my car in the last 3 years?! I used to drive a tidy, spotless, nicely scented car with great music. I washed and vacuumed it weekly, it had no upholstery stains, or stains of any sort, really. I used masking tape to remove the plethora of dog hairs that got into the fabric whenever my animal(s) would ride in it, and sprayed Lysol each time they came out. I waxed it quarterly without FAIL, and the thing was NICE. I kept a tidy bag of emergency items in the trunk. Like my mountain biking helmet, gloves, and bike lock. Jumper cables. Rope, cable ties, bungee cords, a few tools. A tampon. :-) And I most definitely did NOT drive a mommy mobile.
Now, I drive a Subaru Forester, Cayenne Red in color. It is a MINI-SUV, dammit, not a station wagon. And, it is the best rated car in its MINI-SUV class, for safety, reliability, and almost religiously Pacific-Northwest-ubiquitousness (ubiquity?). But, in a sadistic twist of irony, my new license plate letters are KDS. As in KIDS. As in, YES, I DRIVE A MOMMY MOBILE. WHAT OF IT?
I have stains on my upholstery from juicy cups that have leaked (you know, the NON-LEAKING KIND?), crumbs, leaves, dirt, more dog hair than you can possibly remove with one case of masking tape from Costco, at least enough to formulate another full dog, and there’s this slightly weird smell. There are toys, wrappers, sweatshirts, a dog blanket, the bag that we carry D’s dry cleaning in, and former sippy cups that are empty in the floorboards. The thing hasn’t been waxed in probably a full year, and is sticky and dusty and covered in bird shit. I mean, seriously. W…T…F? Have I LOST MY MIND? How can a person’s vehicular hygiene change SO MUCH in the course of 3 years? It’s terribly embarrassing.

One in a zillion

2006-08-26T09:24:00.000-06:00

So, I am about number 33316523 or something like this in Blogger's role-call of blogs. Ooooh, the warm fuzzy feeling is coming over me. What a close-knit group we all are! I felt much this way when I first began attending the University of Texas. Feeling like one in a zillion sure has a way of making a person feel insignificant. BUT, as I have recently discovered the fine art of blogging, and I was an OCD journal writer from age 12, I am compelled. COMPELLED, I tell you. And I am certain I will want to post pictures and thoughts and errata for my insanely adorable and brilliant child, Hootie. No, not her real name. Unless you ask her, and she'll tell you she's Hootie. She's actually Alexa. She is 3, going on 13.
Here is where she wrote her name:

So here I am, posting my first official blog post in the great big blogosphere. Hooray.