I might just be stubborn.
I've refused to believe it, though evidence exists. But I'm slowly accepting this possibility, which I think goes to show that I'm really not THAT stubborn. I'll acquiesce to the accusations, a little, just to prove them wrong.
Yesterday, that bull-headed trait really wreaked some havoc. And I haven't cleaned it up yet.
All I really wanted was a catalyst, like a meteorite, or something else surprising. Out here, alone mostly, on five acres, in another new town, nothing happens. Unless I force it to. The girl wants some excitement, and she wants it to originate someplace else, that way, it's actually exciting and surprising, instead of inevitable and predictable, because she predicted it. I want Ed McMahon to drive up with a foam core check, even though I never filled out the sweepstakes forms. I want to win the lottery without buying a ticket. I want you to drop by, without an invitation.
But alas, everything out here is my idea, my doing, my choice, my own volition. God-like, yes I am. But it's boring too. Now I know what the gods must have felt when they slapped together some humankind: "It's boring. Nothing interesting ever happens around here. Unless I do it and even if I don't do it, I know it's happening. You know what we need? We need to make something over which we will have no control, and every second of the day, we'll never know what it will do next."
"Oooh! Great idea, Omniscient Igor!"
"Look what I just slapped together, my omnipotent Bertha!"
"Let's give it some free will and watch it gogo!"
"WEEEE! that's funny!"
"Oh crap... not cool little dudes, not cool."
And that was me in my kitchen yesterday. Bored, I tackled no less than three disasters at once, each one a proven prior failure. I charged head-on into disaster out of sheer boredom. And it sucked, as predicted.
Half the ingredients were substitutes.
I've never had one bun of success with yeast, and yet, I dove into dinner rolls with absurd abandon.
I miscarried yogurt, and I'll never know why.
And I ruined a perfectly good quiche by messing up the crust with an experimental flour. The CRUST people! As the name suggests, it's not that hard. It's crust. Crust happens. I've never effed up crust.
Why did I undertake these obviously ill-fated fiascos? Because I was bored. Because I am the god of my kitchen. And I think that's what happened to them too. They rolled out this human dough even as they stubbornly knew, "Now THIS is going to be a disaster."
Late and muddy, my Catalyst came home from work, mixed up some hot buttered rum
(which actually turned out, the jerk) and served it to his failed, deflated goddess. But rum and I...mmm... let's just say that rum doesn't perk me up. I don't even know why I have it... except for Huck also makes really great rum caramel sauce for things like apple pies and pumpkin pies, which he's been successfully rolling out ever few days, the ass.
Eventually Blue noted, "Mom, that's some seriously negative self talk." As an example, I clearly stink. But as a didactic teacher, I seem to be getting some where with my kids.
"I just don't get micro-organisms and bacteria, I guess. I even used thermometers this time."
They're so subtle, those living micro-scopic cultures. And yet they seem so easy. It's like failing at Chia-pets. Everyone can make bread. But me. It's the basic staff of life. After 15 years of trying, I still can't even make a single bun of life. People say to me: Oh! you should make bread! And I usually say, Actually, I prefer to support others for whom that is a successful passion. When I say that, I feel that my failures are actually blessings upon micro-economies.
Huck said, "I think this is an improvement. They're actually sort of edible, if they're hot, with enough butter....and honey."
"I made a dozen rocks for dinner, don't sugar coat it."
"I ate one!"
"That's not a compliment." The man eats everything, anything.
I can't get it going on here, despite that fact that we are all positively swimming in a sea of catalysts. Every day we walk through an invisible fog of catalysts: bacteria, yeasts, molds, micro-organisms yet unnamed and undiscovered. We are continually bathed in catalysts. Nothing -no change, no growth, no life even- happens without them. They make me live and they'll devour my death. And I cannot control them. I cannot tame them. Just like the gods and their little catalysts, us.
Maybe I am my own best instigator, but you could never infer that from what I messed up yesterday. It wasn't boring at least. Mission partially accomplished, I suppose.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Ode to a Night Out
I'll never forget where I was when Huck proposed we go see Bright Star, the understated, smoldering film about Keats and his muse. I was on the toilet, my favorite one. And I nearly fell off at his suggestion.
I read the reviews. I ached and pined like Fanny herself to see it. But I didn't even mention it. Huck's hissing and spitting hatred of poetry is epic, steadfast and unwavering. It was hopeless, I knew. His poetical loathing probably accounts for some percentage of the reason I married him (probably less of a percentage than having his 5 month old baby (as I may have mentioned here before) but a percentage none-the-less because I have learned well and thoroughly a distrust of poets, especially male ones. Love the poem; pass on the poet). So a poetry-despiser seemed like good odds in my mate-hunting favor.
But Huck's hatred of poetry suffered a crack recently. We loved the film The Motorcycle Diaries. LOVED IT! The both of us. In this film, Pablo Neruda is quoted extensively. And a few days later, as fate would have it, I decided to finish unpacking my office.
I've been 1/2 unpacked since June. Another 1/2 of my books and office gear languished in piles and boxes. And the previous half of my volumes were donated, discarded and sold during "The Ordeal of Sarajoy, June 2008 through May 2009." (I do have to specify the dates because I've had some number of ORDEALS).
Anyway, Huck was stretching nearby when I un-crated a translation of Neruda's called Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon. Curiosity pre-piqued by Che, Huck actually took the volume in hand and began to read "Ode to the Onion." And he hasn't looked back.
This is probably THE WARNING SIGN NUMERO UNO. Alarms should be clanging. Red lights should be flashing. From greasy dock worker to poetry loving dandy with fabulous taste in shoes and a passion for Neruda! YIKES! But me being me, I find it charming anyway. Life on the edge!
Bright Star, if you need to know, rocked. The love rocked. The costumes rocked. Fanny reminded me of our Wenatchee babysitter, in that she was a talented young seamstress who also sewed almost all her own clothes. The period was not quite spot-on with a few 21st century mannerisms and I swear there was a banister in there from the 1910's. But nothing as historically wicked and barf inducing as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Ipecac of Cathode-Ray-Tube.
We viewed Bright Star at the tiny artsy theater named The Magic Lantern: cute!
The date was facilitated by another visit from my grandkid-obsessed parents: THANK YOU!!
And we never puked up our dinner. It's like a first date, or a date of firsts. Awesome movie, not followed by food poisoning. I just don't know what to expect next from this crazy life!
photos are of our wedding and part of my new office
I read the reviews. I ached and pined like Fanny herself to see it. But I didn't even mention it. Huck's hissing and spitting hatred of poetry is epic, steadfast and unwavering. It was hopeless, I knew. His poetical loathing probably accounts for some percentage of the reason I married him (probably less of a percentage than having his 5 month old baby (as I may have mentioned here before) but a percentage none-the-less because I have learned well and thoroughly a distrust of poets, especially male ones. Love the poem; pass on the poet). So a poetry-despiser seemed like good odds in my mate-hunting favor.
But Huck's hatred of poetry suffered a crack recently. We loved the film The Motorcycle Diaries. LOVED IT! The both of us. In this film, Pablo Neruda is quoted extensively. And a few days later, as fate would have it, I decided to finish unpacking my office.
I've been 1/2 unpacked since June. Another 1/2 of my books and office gear languished in piles and boxes. And the previous half of my volumes were donated, discarded and sold during "The Ordeal of Sarajoy, June 2008 through May 2009." (I do have to specify the dates because I've had some number of ORDEALS).
Anyway, Huck was stretching nearby when I un-crated a translation of Neruda's called Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon. Curiosity pre-piqued by Che, Huck actually took the volume in hand and began to read "Ode to the Onion." And he hasn't looked back.
This is probably THE WARNING SIGN NUMERO UNO. Alarms should be clanging. Red lights should be flashing. From greasy dock worker to poetry loving dandy with fabulous taste in shoes and a passion for Neruda! YIKES! But me being me, I find it charming anyway. Life on the edge!
Bright Star, if you need to know, rocked. The love rocked. The costumes rocked. Fanny reminded me of our Wenatchee babysitter, in that she was a talented young seamstress who also sewed almost all her own clothes. The period was not quite spot-on with a few 21st century mannerisms and I swear there was a banister in there from the 1910's. But nothing as historically wicked and barf inducing as Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman and Ipecac of Cathode-Ray-Tube.
We viewed Bright Star at the tiny artsy theater named The Magic Lantern: cute!
The date was facilitated by another visit from my grandkid-obsessed parents: THANK YOU!!
And we never puked up our dinner. It's like a first date, or a date of firsts. Awesome movie, not followed by food poisoning. I just don't know what to expect next from this crazy life!
photos are of our wedding and part of my new office
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Alphabet-man mock-up
Top Ten Signs You Might be a Bored Housewife
10) You'd actually consider an affair with Bob the Builder. He's so cute in those over-all and hard hat. He's so nice to Wendy! And since he landed the contract for Sunflower Valley, he's Eco too!
9) "A barrel of monkeys" is no longer a euphemism for fun, but is realistically a stupid Christmas gift played with for five minutes picked up for several years.
8) You dream neither in black and white, nor in color, but in cotton balls, paper plates, glue, and popsicle sticks.
7) Soap operas are so 80's. They're called blogs now.
6) Quiet time is reading a book on a lounge chair (while children roll all over you, mewling about boredom).
5) When your husband comes home, you actually ask him how his day went just so you can hear someone speak clearly in a well moderated tone of voice.
4) Even if they are just bills, you love getting the mail. It's your big adventure of the day: sneaking all the way to the end of the drive way, crossing the street, and opening a secret compartment where the secret car with the official light on top drops you secret messages. So thrilling.
3) The last person who cried out your name during sex was not even in the room with you, but was down the hall and needed a glass of milk.
2) You would actually blog about the top ten qualifications you have for the job of "bored housewife".
1) Ten? I'd rather go do the dishes…
10) You'd actually consider an affair with Bob the Builder. He's so cute in those over-all and hard hat. He's so nice to Wendy! And since he landed the contract for Sunflower Valley, he's Eco too!
9) "A barrel of monkeys" is no longer a euphemism for fun, but is realistically a stupid Christmas gift played with for five minutes picked up for several years.
8) You dream neither in black and white, nor in color, but in cotton balls, paper plates, glue, and popsicle sticks.
7) Soap operas are so 80's. They're called blogs now.
6) Quiet time is reading a book on a lounge chair (while children roll all over you, mewling about boredom).
5) When your husband comes home, you actually ask him how his day went just so you can hear someone speak clearly in a well moderated tone of voice.
4) Even if they are just bills, you love getting the mail. It's your big adventure of the day: sneaking all the way to the end of the drive way, crossing the street, and opening a secret compartment where the secret car with the official light on top drops you secret messages. So thrilling.
3) The last person who cried out your name during sex was not even in the room with you, but was down the hall and needed a glass of milk.
2) You would actually blog about the top ten qualifications you have for the job of "bored housewife".
1) Ten? I'd rather go do the dishes…
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Studious Mother
"Kids teach us so much." The jumbo parent cliche.
I don't even know what people mean when they say that.
But I have discovered, like a new world, at least 1000 ways my kids teach me. Most importantly, I learned that "Remember when we had a dog and we tied him to a fish with a wee-cock?" (Blue around the time she turned two) actually means "I'd like a dog to walk on a leash, and I'd also like a peacock."
I've also learned, or rather come to the surprising place in my life where the opportunity has presented itself to note: Cauliflower is not for standing on.
In addition, I've learned much about myself, such as how my voice sounds and the skin around my eyes bag when I've been awoken in the middle of the night to change sheets or hold a bucket at the precise projectile distance.
I've actually learned that Blue's constant use of the word actually, actually comes from me!
I've learned that some piano teachers really stink.
But here's what I've REALLY learned. The first time I learned it, I was on the bus cruising through Seattle's tiny Chinatown. I was anxious about: school, money, being pregnant with some dude's baby and I barely knew him, having to deal with everyone else's responses to being a knocked up adolescent (okay, I was 25, but I looked 16 and that's how people treated me and now I have a lifetime of empathy for any teen who gets knocked up) and then dealing with a different set of opinions when I chose to have the baby, not to mention having to deal with my own tangle of emotions while having to make crucial decisions in which the entire world seemed to be claiming a stake.
So... where was I? Oh yes, I was on the bus. And I was stressed. And I could feel it in my gut. And I had just read that fetuses get emotion related hormones out of their mama's blood stream. So this baby was feeling anxious for no reason that it could figure out. And I thought to myself, "Self, why should this Being carry your anxiety? Let's give it a rest, a peaceful place to grow without imported anxiety hormones." And then I thought, "Wow, I guess this is sort of love, the responsibility love, the caring-for-another love." And then I thought, "Self, if being riddled with anxiety and stress are good enough for you, why should your baby have it any better? An early dose of anxiety will actually acclimate it perfectly to modern life. So, go ahead, wind your stomach into a ball, chew your nails and hyperventilate, enjoy it. Why deny yourself just cuz your preggers?"
Okay, not really. The question was actually, "Why wouldn't you want peace for yourself? You don't need a fetus en utero to give yourself a break. Love yourself! Live in peace, grow in confidence and safety! Self, let go of your anxiety for your own sake AND the baby's!"
And that is how I began to care for myself. What I want for my children, why is that too good for me?
My son can be a basket case. He's fairly happy-go-lucky, but once he starts wailing, it's anyone's guess as to what decade he might stop. He's done this since birth. The first 6 months, he spent almost every waking hour in the bath, which was the only place he would stop crying. That, and whenever I shoved a mouthful of boob at him. When he was three, he cried for most of an afternoon. After he cried himself to sleep, the neighbor lady scuttled over and proclaimed, "Wow! That was intense!" In worse moments, I've told him to get a grip on his emotions, (okay, loudly told him to get a grip), that it was necessary for his sanity and mine. Of course, he's only 5, where would he have pulled those skills from?
These tears wear out a mother and worry her. So I ordered the book, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. It's in line with the rest of my parenting library: How to Talk so Kids Can Listen and Listen so Kids Can Talk, Liberated Parents, Liberated Children, Non-Violent Communication, Playful Parenting, etc.
If you ascribe to the ideas proposed in these volumes, you will endure shock from the authoritarian set. Shock, ridicule and annoyance. You will also note that these tools are effective some of the time, but not all of it, which will leave you feeling like a total idiot when they don't work in front of your authoritarian friends (and that is the only reliable time they won't work).
The gist of Emotional Intelligence is the refrain: you can feel whatever you want, you just can't act however you want. This isn't news to our family, but I recently adopted it as a mantra.
I was uncomfortable with Coyote's depths of despair. I was unhappy with his anger, his sadness, his whatever crappy emotion: what if he gets stuck this way! like a bad face, or crossed-eyes. I took it personally too: instead of "WAAWAAWAA!" I heard, "You're a shitty mom and if you were any good at this job you would have fixed the problem before I even noticed it!! WAAA!" I mentioned this translation at a party and all the moms stopped and stared at me. I thought, yeah I just hit the nail on the head. Au contrair! One mom ventured in to the silence and said, "No, Sarajoy, they're just crying cuz they're babies." Well, maybe they could just SAY SO next time! Sheesh!
Anyway my prior attempts to coax, cajole, or sooth him out of it were more about fixing the problem and my problem with it, than about genuinely understanding him. And I'm going to say to you now, that I am really happy with the way this is going. Coyote is fussing a little less, but I DON'T CARE! I mean, I care that he's unhappy, but it doesn't get under my skin any more because it's okay for him to feel unhappy!
And there's more! I'm singing the same song to myself. Dear Sarajoy, it's okay to feel whatever you feel. You don't have to fix it. You're not going to get stuck in it. It's okay. And the more I say it to the kids, the more I say it to myself, the more I feel it. In my frustration, in my anger, in my PTSD from this past year, I'm fine. I'm even sort of happy when I'm sad because I don't feel this pressure to put a pink ribbon on every teardrop and find the f-ing cure already. We're not broken and I we don't need fixing. We've got feelings and they are fine.
And that is what my difficult child has taught me these past few weeks. Like a Buddhist, I am grateful for my adversary...er child.
Also: happy lame birthday to me! I'm 34 and so much more... At least I'm not in the hospital this year (barfing, 4 bags of fluids and still didn't pee for 2 days), nor am I visualizing starvation like last year. I just bought a cream cheese, huckleberry danish at the farmer's market (where I bought mostly potatoes and squash and my tongue kind of curled up inside it's hovel and said "I'm soooo not ready for my winter palate!") and now I'm going to take a bath with a good book that I just bought at Auntie's. I picked out a couple Pulitzer winners because, you know, those people have really good taste, I've noticed. For dinner, I was dreaming of my favorite caramelized onion tarte, but now I'm liking the idea of take-out pizza and no dirty dishes.
I don't even know what people mean when they say that.
But I have discovered, like a new world, at least 1000 ways my kids teach me. Most importantly, I learned that "Remember when we had a dog and we tied him to a fish with a wee-cock?" (Blue around the time she turned two) actually means "I'd like a dog to walk on a leash, and I'd also like a peacock."
I've also learned, or rather come to the surprising place in my life where the opportunity has presented itself to note: Cauliflower is not for standing on.
In addition, I've learned much about myself, such as how my voice sounds and the skin around my eyes bag when I've been awoken in the middle of the night to change sheets or hold a bucket at the precise projectile distance.
I've actually learned that Blue's constant use of the word actually, actually comes from me!
I've learned that some piano teachers really stink.
But here's what I've REALLY learned. The first time I learned it, I was on the bus cruising through Seattle's tiny Chinatown. I was anxious about: school, money, being pregnant with some dude's baby and I barely knew him, having to deal with everyone else's responses to being a knocked up adolescent (okay, I was 25, but I looked 16 and that's how people treated me and now I have a lifetime of empathy for any teen who gets knocked up) and then dealing with a different set of opinions when I chose to have the baby, not to mention having to deal with my own tangle of emotions while having to make crucial decisions in which the entire world seemed to be claiming a stake.
So... where was I? Oh yes, I was on the bus. And I was stressed. And I could feel it in my gut. And I had just read that fetuses get emotion related hormones out of their mama's blood stream. So this baby was feeling anxious for no reason that it could figure out. And I thought to myself, "Self, why should this Being carry your anxiety? Let's give it a rest, a peaceful place to grow without imported anxiety hormones." And then I thought, "Wow, I guess this is sort of love, the responsibility love, the caring-for-another love." And then I thought, "Self, if being riddled with anxiety and stress are good enough for you, why should your baby have it any better? An early dose of anxiety will actually acclimate it perfectly to modern life. So, go ahead, wind your stomach into a ball, chew your nails and hyperventilate, enjoy it. Why deny yourself just cuz your preggers?"
Okay, not really. The question was actually, "Why wouldn't you want peace for yourself? You don't need a fetus en utero to give yourself a break. Love yourself! Live in peace, grow in confidence and safety! Self, let go of your anxiety for your own sake AND the baby's!"
And that is how I began to care for myself. What I want for my children, why is that too good for me?
My son can be a basket case. He's fairly happy-go-lucky, but once he starts wailing, it's anyone's guess as to what decade he might stop. He's done this since birth. The first 6 months, he spent almost every waking hour in the bath, which was the only place he would stop crying. That, and whenever I shoved a mouthful of boob at him. When he was three, he cried for most of an afternoon. After he cried himself to sleep, the neighbor lady scuttled over and proclaimed, "Wow! That was intense!" In worse moments, I've told him to get a grip on his emotions, (okay, loudly told him to get a grip), that it was necessary for his sanity and mine. Of course, he's only 5, where would he have pulled those skills from?
These tears wear out a mother and worry her. So I ordered the book, Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child. It's in line with the rest of my parenting library: How to Talk so Kids Can Listen and Listen so Kids Can Talk, Liberated Parents, Liberated Children, Non-Violent Communication, Playful Parenting, etc.
If you ascribe to the ideas proposed in these volumes, you will endure shock from the authoritarian set. Shock, ridicule and annoyance. You will also note that these tools are effective some of the time, but not all of it, which will leave you feeling like a total idiot when they don't work in front of your authoritarian friends (and that is the only reliable time they won't work).
The gist of Emotional Intelligence is the refrain: you can feel whatever you want, you just can't act however you want. This isn't news to our family, but I recently adopted it as a mantra.
I was uncomfortable with Coyote's depths of despair. I was unhappy with his anger, his sadness, his whatever crappy emotion: what if he gets stuck this way! like a bad face, or crossed-eyes. I took it personally too: instead of "WAAWAAWAA!" I heard, "You're a shitty mom and if you were any good at this job you would have fixed the problem before I even noticed it!! WAAA!" I mentioned this translation at a party and all the moms stopped and stared at me. I thought, yeah I just hit the nail on the head. Au contrair! One mom ventured in to the silence and said, "No, Sarajoy, they're just crying cuz they're babies." Well, maybe they could just SAY SO next time! Sheesh!
Anyway my prior attempts to coax, cajole, or sooth him out of it were more about fixing the problem and my problem with it, than about genuinely understanding him. And I'm going to say to you now, that I am really happy with the way this is going. Coyote is fussing a little less, but I DON'T CARE! I mean, I care that he's unhappy, but it doesn't get under my skin any more because it's okay for him to feel unhappy!
And there's more! I'm singing the same song to myself. Dear Sarajoy, it's okay to feel whatever you feel. You don't have to fix it. You're not going to get stuck in it. It's okay. And the more I say it to the kids, the more I say it to myself, the more I feel it. In my frustration, in my anger, in my PTSD from this past year, I'm fine. I'm even sort of happy when I'm sad because I don't feel this pressure to put a pink ribbon on every teardrop and find the f-ing cure already. We're not broken and I we don't need fixing. We've got feelings and they are fine.
And that is what my difficult child has taught me these past few weeks. Like a Buddhist, I am grateful for my adversary...er child.
Also: happy lame birthday to me! I'm 34 and so much more... At least I'm not in the hospital this year (barfing, 4 bags of fluids and still didn't pee for 2 days), nor am I visualizing starvation like last year. I just bought a cream cheese, huckleberry danish at the farmer's market (where I bought mostly potatoes and squash and my tongue kind of curled up inside it's hovel and said "I'm soooo not ready for my winter palate!") and now I'm going to take a bath with a good book that I just bought at Auntie's. I picked out a couple Pulitzer winners because, you know, those people have really good taste, I've noticed. For dinner, I was dreaming of my favorite caramelized onion tarte, but now I'm liking the idea of take-out pizza and no dirty dishes.
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