go to the first entry
October 4, 2006
Big changes, lots to tell, and yet I'm in one of
my overwhelmed stages so the fact that I'm blogging right now instead
of burying my head in a book or a game of solitaire is a noteworthy
accomplishment. A couple of months ago, another mom said to me in
passing, "How do you DO it all?" Somehow that remark made me
really take pride in all of the things that I DO do, and do well.
I mother two active boys; I keep a large house in clean dishes, clean
clothes, and periodically cleaned floors; I feed our family healthy,
homemade meals that taste really good; I can fruit and make jam; I
entertain at least monthly; I volunteer with LLL; I host a yearly
tie-dye party; I read books, play games, and have fun with my family
and friends; I take the kids to swimming twice a week and work out
while they swim; I garden; I blog; I take pictures and catalogue
them... "Dang," I thought, "I really do a lot."
And then B started kindergarten, presenting a whole
passel of new volunteer opportunities. Most importantly for my
health, it meant five afternoons a week of a four mile walk/run with
two significant hills and up to eighty pounds of kids in the double
jogger. For a while, Pepper was getting fit with me, but he's
been hiding under the futon lately so I must have been pushing him too
hard. And I've not abandoned the work-out while kids swim, just
switched to time on the rowing machine and sit-ups before I use the
Stairmaster. I feel very lucky that I've got this opportunity to
do the right thing (for the environment and my body) built into my
day. I've been enjoying the endorphins and friends have noticed a
spring in my step.
Since A has After-Lunch-Bunch this year, and
therefore is at Montessori until 2:30 three days a week, I was
anticipating having even more time to myself this fall. I had
plans to put prints in albums, paint, refinish and fix up the house,
finally organize big chunks of bookcases and boxes in the garage,
finish my garden map, get into a writing schedule, catch up on my
correspondence, put music into accessible playlists, and investigate
starting up some small businesses.
Instead, two weeks ago I started a job. I'm a
contractor with my own hours, I'm getting paid well, and it is
interesting work, but I hadn't intended to be employed quite this
quickly. The plum pretty much fell into my lap and since it was
so appetizing, was dropped by a friend, and except for the timing is
close to ideal, here I am with juice all over my hands and a plum in my
mouth too big to swallow at one go. Right now I look around and
am faced with literal piles of things I need to take care of.
Let's take a virtual tour:
We start in the living room where
I have a pile of books and clothes on the hearth that need to go to
charity or be sold, purchases for our emergency kits that are still in
the bags from the store needing a better and organized storage spot
than the floor;
Wonderfalls and
Battlestar Galactica
awaiting return, probably
unwatched, to our friends; a half-finished afghan; ooh my plants need
water badly!
Moving to the dining room we have
piles of mail to go through, newspapers to recycle; ads and catalogs to
peruse or toss; there is the surprisingly heavy box full of stamp
catalogs from my in-laws to go near the philatetic collection in the
basement; I didn't clear my own dinner plate, so that's a bit
disgusting; I was going to put pictures in frames for this room by
Christmas last year (ha!); and oh, those thirsty plants!
Kitchen, ick. Zucchini I
let grow too much and need to process and find room for in the freezer;
dishes to wash; compost to take out; bananas that need bread made of
them; plants that need re-potting; and I'm hungry for something I can't
figure out.
The art room has my work-space in
it so it's not exactly neutral ground in the vying-for-my-attention
category; there's the pile of papers from B's school that need
attention or simple placement; stacks of games, canning equipment,
toys, and pantry items to go downstairs (which reminds me I didn't
empty my trunk from today's Costco run); and there's my grandmother's
angel wing begonia suffering in the Seattle air with white mold that
hasn't responded to my non-chemical treatment, so needs something I
have to figure out what and do something about it.
The reading room and the kids'
room are both low-stress mainly because there's not much more than
sleeping boys in the one and sleeping books in the other. The
bathrooms both are growing things and need us to get on the stick
finding someone to help with the housework. My room, though, is
scary. Just inside the doorway is a PILE of THINGS TO DO!
This is right next to the set of shelves each holding another category
of more THINGS TO DO. I have gifts owed (in some cases sitting in
boxes awaiting....something...), letters to respond to (sorry, SMR),
lists of garden chores, three rolls of print film to be developed,
required reading, records to record and keep, to do lists to go through
if only so I can cross something off (though more likely to grow
another list). The kids need dentist appointments, and it's time
for ours too. The laundry pile is mid-thigh even though there are
at least three clean loads downstairs awaiting folding and putting
away. Fortunately, if I can get beyond the entry to our room,
there is little to keep me from my bed, physically or psychologically.
So long as I don't look out the
window at the garden. I will notice that I haven't completely
cleaned up from our tie-dye party in August, and I should use the hot
tub at
least weekly or C will start rumbling again about how we never use it
and maybe it should go away. Some of the pumpkins are getting
eaten by something, the beans are going all soft and yellow, I'd meant
to replant peas, the grass needs mowing, the dirt pile needs spreading,
I need to weed, and the corn which survived the cat chewing it off is
simply an embarrasment and needs to dry out so I can at least use it to
decorate. Ah, I should pull our Halloween boxes out and decorate,
and determine kid costumes, and make plans for parties. Which
means that I should also figure out what goes on our wish lists since
we have two November birthdays and I am determined (again) to try this
year to be really ready for the holidays and special dates this year.
(Okay, there's no need to actually
hurt yourself laughing at
me.)
There are a few more hot spots
downstairs I haven't yet mentioned - pictures! - mending! - clean up
from the new window installation! - find the kids missing
Backyard
Baseball CD! - clean the garage! - refinish the kitchen cupboard my
dad
made! - get rid of the moldy orange smell in the car! - paint the guest
bathroom! - fix up the guest room! - but the other real looming
pressure is what's under my fingertips at the moment.
My laptop has pictures to share
with folks, websites I haven't visited in ages, mounting piles of email
that make me cower, and this self-same website which needs a lot of
work. At least I can assuage my guilt a little in that department
with this evening's typing, even if I didn't talk much about what
interests me and just spewed parts of my to do list into the
ether. Which, in the end, is worth a little loss of sleep (though
the latest yawn nearly cracked my face), but not too much. So,
good night. I hope my list doesn't haunt anyone, even me.
Perhaps now that it's free of just my head, it will go gentle into that
good night so I may rage against the dying of the light another time
soon.
We'll see.
July 25, 2006
It has been a long, tough week so far (and it's
only Tuesday). C is gone to Chicago and SF this week and I
am on my own. I am determined not to play a solitaire game while
he is gone and am quite horrified to find how often I had been playing
and how much a crutch it had become, a way to bury my head. I am
enjoying certain moments with the kids more consciously, and I am using
my Palm more effectively keeping my to-dos current and trying to get my
calendar funtion to be of use again. Yet still I have been
forgetting major things: in the course of 24 hours managed to forget a
doctor's appointment for both boys, their swim lesson and
pre-registration for next session, and a class field trip. At the
same time, I really do feel like I'm getting a lot done. But
apparently not the right things. Sigh. I miss my husband
and want him to come home.
By making the kids brush after nursing instead of
letting them nurse to sleep at night, I think I have knocked out one of
their last two nursing sessions. Now it seems that they are like
as not to decline to nurse at night if they can't nurse to sleep.
There was a lot of sadness initially which hasn't all gone away.
I've commiserated and been sad too. I miss that part too, partly
because they loved it so, and partly because it was individual
cuddling. We can go back to cuddling and going to sleep one at a
time once C returns if we want to, of course, but it is easiest
for me to put two to bed at once, especially if it is late and they are
very tired. The idea of a ceremony to say goodbye to nursing to
sleep caused B to cry harder, probably because in the process of
explaining the word ceremony I inadvertently used the word party.
We will likely revisit drawing pictures or making a book about the
change and how it makes them feel, since that has helped other
sadnesses before, but the timing hasn't worked out yet. And they
haven't been interested in choosing how they want to go to sleep once
they are lying down, but do like choosing in which order books,
pajamas, vitamins, nursing and brushing happen. Their squawks
have been lessening this past week (this was night number 8 under the
new regime), but I can't tell how much of that is acceptance and how
much exhaustion.
Apparently B hurt my friend's feelings by noting
that she was "fat," not once but twice. I wasn't party to the
actual conversations, but it was clear even to her that he was just
making an observation, not trying to wound. I understand that
when she told him that it hurt her feelings (thank you!), he
apologized. I suspect he was figuring out how the world works and
whether words mean what he thinks they mean. I know he was
bewildered. "Some are thin and some are fat. The fat one
has a yellow hat."
I didn't want to have this conversation with him,
and I suspect I didn't do it well. Up until now, body size, like
skin color, ability levels, age, height, strength, beliefs, occupation,
gender, and food preference, was one of those features that varied but
did not have a value judgement attached. I don't want him to
believe that fat is bad, that fat people are wrong in some way, yet I
just introduced him to that very idea by explaining that my friend was
teased when she was growing up about being fat. He hasn't yet
been teased about anything and he really doesn't understand.
Probably what I should have done was have the conversation be a
three-way one with my friend there to answer the questions I couldn't
(chiefly, why?). Now someone's weight is something he can notice
but not comment on so that he doesn't hurt someone else's
feelings. He is about to enter the public schools and I know that
at some point he will be facing teasing because he is small. I
feel like I have just undermined my own future reassurances by making
comments about body size into a powerful way to wound. I want to
be able to say that people's bodies are different for lots of different
reasons, that bigger or smaller or right in the middle aren't any
better or worse than anything else. I want to be able to say that
size has little to do with function or ability or character or even
strength. I want to be able to blow it off, help him blow it off,
because we (our family/community/friends) think that kind of teasing is
stupid, like teasing someone about the color of the sky.
I feel very fortunate to have grown up without most
of the food issues that many of my peers have struggled with.
This is an advantage I am trying to pass along to my own kids. I
do, however, have my own struggles with obesity in others, mostly an
inner reaction coupled with an inner voice arguing with it. I
want my own body to be healthy and fit and strong, I want to help
C be the size and weight he wants to be, I want to have art and
images in my house and my life that not only doesn't court, but
counters the unrealistic female form of Barbie and Victoria's
Secret. Since they don't have sisters, I want my boys to grow up
knowing what a variety of real girls and women looks like. And, I
want my boys to see fat and thin, flabby and emaciated, stocky and
trim, without seeing bad bodies and good bodies. Anyone have any
advice?
Maybe next time I'll talk about doing things
thoroughly and well. Right now I need to get to sleep.