yet another way you can tell I never grew up
Do you accessorize? Would you tell me how? Somehow I didn’t get the gene, or I just haven’t grown up enough yet. Or maybe it’s a southern thing and my faux southernness don’t go that deep. Or maybe I’m just a redneck.
The thirteen year old inside me thinks it’s stupid.
Someone I work with, not in my office but the director of an institution that works with my institution, always looks so put together and ladylike. I have figured it out.
She accessorizes.
She always has either pearls or a lovely scarf around her neck. She wears neat, plain black and gray sweaters and trousers just about all the time, occasionally branches out into a beautiful hot pink or red quilted blazer, has adorable red or green librarian glasses, and always has on her lipstick. It’s a very simple look, and easy, I know. She doesn’t spend hours slaving to look beautiful, I guarantee it. But she’s lovely.
One night we went out, and she had on this wonderful black shawl with lovely dark tapestry flowers on it. It was dramatic, and cool, and not too foofy.
On me it would just look stupid. Now how does she know to do this?
On me her accessorizing prowess would look like I got my scarf at the Dollar General. Which is probably exactly where I would get such a thing.
I always admire those women who have precisely five blouses, five sweaters, and five pairs of trousers, with perfect high heels that match each ensemble. I wonder if I could do that? I wonder if I could venture to buy a nice-ish scarf at a real live department store and actually wear it without feeling like a thirteen year old trying to dress up like her grandma?
Here’s the test. I’m going to ask her if her daughter, who is twenty years younger than I am, accessorizes or wears pearls regularly. If she does, my theory that good accessorizing is a simple function of maturity will be shot… and I’ll know I haven’t a chance cause I didn’t get the gene.
only two hours of tv
We spent much of today either cleaning in my upstairs office/guest room or outdoors. Shaky baby only watched about two hours of TV total, at two different sittings.
I know that sounds like a lot but it isn’t. It especially isn’t a lot for an unstructured 10-hour day when my husband or I, whoever’s home with her, can’ t begin to figure out how to keep her happy so that we can go about our business. But today it worked out well. I got tons done and she hovered nearby, mostly amusing herself. She’s awesome. And so is the uncluttered vista of my office/guest room and the smoothly mowed vista of my whole (!) back yard.
She does look forward to getting back into school next week though, she told me.
sticky sticky
This butter tarts were soooooo addictively good. I am unable to stop eating them. However… despite the use of cupcake papers, they came out all sticky and impossible to keep whole and pretty. What do I need to do to make this work?
For one thing, I made the tarts in extra large muffin tins, and I think I overfilled the cupcake papers.
Unless someone tells me it’s not a good thing, one of those silicone muffin pans is on my wish list.
I found a recipe I liked and used golden raisins instead of currants, and ground the walnuts up really, really fine. Decadent goodness. The plumped up raisins reminded me of everything that is good about mincemeat– as opposed to everything that’s bad about it, of course, such as beef suet (gag).
tears on thanksgiving
in the pioneer days of my childhood
we had no television
not much respect for popular culture
principled bohemian benign neglect
unwillingness to impress something on us,
desire to let our imaginations guide us
forcing us to find our own fun
and leaving us twisting in the wind
without much of a cultural compass
such as it would have been
(we had a lot of books though)
with my child it’s different
even if it is a massive commercial
I have jumped into mass culture with at least one foot
I don’t like barbie
but I do like Laurie Berkner
we turned on the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
I’d never watched it
with its slightly crusted stars
and whiff of cultural compass
Laurie Berkner was on
and I rushed to wake my three year old baby up
my husband said we can always rewind it–
these are the days
so I decided to let her sleep on
but in the kitchen I wept with happiness
(I hadn’t even finished my first mimosa)
as I cleaned up the baking mess
(I’ve quit eating meat and we’re having Thanksgiving
at a friend’s house, bringing butter tarts and green bean
casserole and a tofu pumpkin cashew cheezekake
that didn’t turn out like i thought and we’re putting
another coat of paint on my stepson’s room before we go)
my husband has two older children
by his first wife.
he’s done all this before.
but for me, over and over, I experience these first times
with my little one
the slightly washed up stars/venerable institutions
of commercial popular culture are waiting to delight her
and yes it’s white and blue eyed
and yes i’m a sellout
dancing princess barbie sent me over the edge
I guess I never thought I’d see this day
couldn’t have even imagined
Off and on between the drudgery of being
a working mother
I cry a lot of happy tears
a chilly November morning
There’s really nothing nicer than waking up with my little family on a chilly November morning… except knowing that tomorrow I’ll wake up and I won’t have to go to work! For FIVE DAYS!
I’m starting to get shaky baby excited about her big girl bed. I mean, we’re nowhere near purchasing it or building it, but I figure, soon, and the more we build up to it the happier she’ll be. Right? I love, love, love, waking up with her warm sleepy little boddy in the bed in the mornings, but I would also love, love, love, waking up with some room and a good night’s sleep free of kicking and prodding from this large toddler who owns all the space and kicks off all the blankets. I mean, she’s welcome to come back in the middle of the night if she wakes up scared or cold… but the blessing is that my little girl is a heavy sleeper and once she hunkers down for the night I believe most nights she’ll be just fine snuggled in her little big girl nest.
Speaking of love, love, love, we’ve been reading Eloise. I got them for her long ago and they are priceless. She loves them, and I love them. And Nanny says everything three times. Does the Plaza even still exist? You know I’ll have to take her there to stay some day and let her tell the operator “and charge it please and thank you very much.”
I dreamed that my mother put up our Christmas tree and it didn’t match my color scheme and and put it in the wrong room, the living room (somehow we were all living in the same house, my old house in rural New York, and my husband and I were dating I guess) and I wanted another tree in our dining room (of this house, the one we’re in now, which is where we talked about putting it, once I get my sewing mess tidied away) (dreams always require all these parentheticals) and I asked if we could at least have two. She said no, and I was sooooo angry and disappointed. I don’t know what that’s about especially since my mother is always very kind about my decorating ocd, but anyway I woke up and found myself in my own warm sweet bed in my own sweet little house and I can put up my tree anywhere I want, in any color scheme I want.
I have one very large, very strong, very furry dog. She’s huge, and at least five pounds of her hugeness is long luxuriant fur. She’s beautiful, and sweet, and full of energy even though she must be about ten years old. She’s rough, but she doesn’t mean to be. She just gets excited. She barrelled into my right leg as I was letting her in from the yard this morning and nearly broke my angle. Luckily I was standing on my left leg or I’d have been down and heard that sickening pop that I often hear– once every couple years at least– when my ankle gives out and then I fall on it. Ugh! I’ve recovered though. That should teach me to wear platform slides over tube socks around the house, especially when I’ve barely woken up, right?
Sigh. To work.
I am so glad to be home
I can finally exhale, or something. I feel disoriented because I’m not being picked up from some airport or loading up a work vehicle. And I like it. I am going to feel like returning royalty when I walk into my office, because my two favorite and closet coworkers are so darn sweet. Closest. That’s closest, not closet. I hate to go back to work but I’ve had a productive and enjoyable weekend, especially yesterday when I went and did some practice healing work in the morning and had my women’s book (and gossip and cool moms’ support network) group (Little Earthquakes by Jennifer Weiner in November, How to be Good by Nick Hornby in December).
Thanksgiving week is finally here… well I shouldn’t say finally, because compared to how prepared I usually am for the holidays by this time of year (not perfectly, but due to obsessiveness and flylady, pretty darn good), the season has really sneaked up. I have to wait on reimbursements for work travel to buy Christmas presents, which kind of sucks, but at least I can start dreaming and working on it. Our list, including our kids who get big gifts and our nieces and nephews and kids of friends and coworkers and the children’s teacher and my, uh, stepwife (my stepkids’ mom) is up to 22. Uh, 23. I just thought of someone else.
The stepson’s red room looks great, after *four* coats, at least the areas we painted with rollers do, but the areas we brush painted look a bit thin. Sigh. I don’t know what we’ll do about that. I am DYING to get his stuff out of the girls’ room and back into his room and start loading him up with Kingdom Hearts themed stuff.
And then there’s the tree… and the groceries, which require even more thought cause I want to do something nice that’s not meat… It’s fun. And I wish I could stay home and do it from now til Christmas.
woods! wood!
Of all the trees that are in the wood– woods! Mom, it’s WOODS!
I’ve been trying to teach shaky baby The Holly and the Ivy. I mean, she has a fantastic grasp of every song they do at her school– she was singing ‘days in the week’ to the tune of the Addams Family theme the other day. I thought that was pretty dang good for three. But why not ratchet it up?
Next will be For Unto Us a Child Is Born, eh? I have those two songs on my Christmas album by the Roches. I hope it still resides in my boxes of Christmas stuff. Now that I am finally home, my head and heart are full of all the usual Christmas doings. I don’t know how many I’ll manage, between being broke til I get my reimbursements for the travel, and just working full time. But I’m ready.
I may need to do a modified flylady to get it all done, because I am allergic to having much left to do, except drink and snuggle when the kids are in bed, the night before. Oh, and here’s the thing. The night before, for us, will probably fall somewhere around the fifteenth, because we have the stepkids the ten days before Christmas this year. How we’re going to get bunk beds built before (four b words!) then I don’t know.
Shaky baby bulldozed over her daddy– that is, he sat down at the computer and she instantly commanded him to help her– ‘I’ll go get the games!’ — with her little computer reading program. She loves it. I am so proud of her, and so proud of him for spending some time together (I know I know, who gives a guy an award for spending time with his kid these days, but it’s just so different from what I grew up with). Earlier this weekend they also worked on a big puzzle with lots and lots of smallish pieces together. Very cool.
my life is a mess but at least rumsy’s getting some censure
[Futuregeek clued me in] Censure is probably all it will be but…
And could positive changes to the minimum wage and health care system truly be on the horizon? I am so shell shocked I hardly dare to hope.
We’re painting my stepson’s room. It looks awesome. The red needs one more coat and then when it dries we can put his furniture back in the room, and then in about four weeks we can go over the line between the red and the gray to make it clean, since the red seeped under the masking tape a bit. Or we can be lazy and slap some kind of masculine, anime/kingdom hearts looking border on there.
His furniture is all over the place. You can barely walk up the hallway and you can’t even enter shaky baby’s room. And this will be the third coat, which we didn’t anticipate having to do, because we took the paint dude’s advice and used a primer. Oh well. One coat won’t take any time with the two of us working on it.
I have to leave today for another out of town for work. I want so badly to stay home and clean up and make my kids’ rooms comfortable and a reflection of the love we feel for them and our desire for them to have comfortable, reasonably orderly spaces that also reflect their personalities and preferences.
After I finished painting yesterday my husband lovingly threw my paint stained clothes right into the wash. Unfortunately, my cell phone was in the pocket. It’s really clean, but it ain’t workin’.
I dropped my cell phone into the pool in our hotel in Louisville when we were visiting after the most adorable baby in the world (my nephew) was born… it dried out and did fine. It shows no sign of doing that this time. Sigh.
My healing school keeps moving the goalpost for requirements to graduate. When I expressed some stress over additional cost and travel, I was invited not to graduate. I am sickened and feel betrayed. I don’t know what I’m supposed to learn from this.
Is it like the army where you don’t question, you just do?
Does my desire for a sense of benchmark and completion, even if it’s just of the first phase, automatically indicate that my work is not ‘deep enough’ or that I’m ‘just looking for a certificate?’
I am frustrated and questioning… but I’ve been working on people a bit and I’ve gotten such good feedback. And when I delve into the quiet parts of my soul for a few minutes I remember how much it has helped me in my personal life. Is it hooey? Does it work? Why am I stressing myself over this? What a huge investment it’s been– what am I thinking? Can I suck it up and graduate, or can I tell them I don’t need this and go be effective in this work without my little benchmark/blessing/piece of paper? I could always go study Reiki (shudder).
My husband, bless him, paid our bills in such a way that I don’t have the money I need for my work travel this week. I can’t check into the hotel that is hosting the training. He promises he’ll fix it, and it may in fact be easily fixed. I can handle it, whatever I need to handle.
And as I was crying myself to sleep last night with PMS and everything else, I realized that if these are my problems I’m pretty darn lucky.
it ain’t easy
being a vegetarian on the road. Pickin’s are pretty slim if you no longer eat steak and fried chicken. You’re pretty much resigned to starches and dairy, in that order. It is absolutely not easy to get whole grains, good fruit or vegetables in any quantity.
This morning my tummy is so happy. My husband made me a burrito of hash brown potatoes with onions, grated colby jack cheese, and salsa. Mmmmm. What a relief. I felt like I was letting my body down, the way I ate last week. Well except for the eggplant parmesan at the Italian restaurant. But that was just one meal.
I just read
In between all the walter mittying I’ve been doing, I actually had time to read two Important Books.
I finished John Green’s An Abundance of Katherines, a candidate for an author award. Talk to me offline about the politics of author awards… much as I would like to act like I’m Somebody by blogging publicly about the process, I can’t do so without compromising it. But don’t get me wrong… the progress has great integrity. I am not saying anything about that. It’s just a group of humans like any other group of humans.
I have also almost finished Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I picked it up by chance at the local public library’s book sale for a buck on my way out of our last library association meeting. Now that is truly an amazing book.
A while back I saw the New York Times Book Review’s list of the best works of fiction in the last 25 years. Beloved won. I was very very happy about this, very ashamed that I hadn’t read it (or any of the other 25, but particularly ashamed that I hadn’t read Beloved), and very curious as to why it won.
It’s an amazing, disturbing, wonderful work. It’s also pretty darn accessible, and immediate, in my book (so to speak), qualities I wouldn’t ordinarily expect to be associated with authors’ and critics’ choice for the best work of fiction in the last 25 years. Women and minorities (not perfectly sure about the minority part, definite about the women part) are conspicuously poorly represented in that list. Is this because women and minorities don’t write as well? Or because we don’t think women write as well? And why would that be?
I’m especially tickled that the winner is not only by a woman, it’s by an African American woman. But did they pick it out of political correctness, killing two affirmative action birds with one stone? It stands on its own. But do our literary authorities really think it stands on its own?
What a terrible thing to say, I know. But I just wonder, because of the way we *still* treat women and minorities, and minority women, in this society. They can’t be president, they can’t take meaningful part in running the Fortune 500, but we can throw them a fish and let them dominate the arts, because you know, those people are so, like, deep or something. Everybody knows that unlike white people, ‘they’ got rhythm.
I need the Cliff notes for Beloved before I can talk much about it. I have my own thoughts, which are, I was told by my tutor at University College of Wales Swansea, much more important to my grade than parroting the words of other scholars about a particular work. I would love to share my thoughts, and I will. But I’d like some perspective from people more knowledgeable than I about the historical and linguistic context of the book. And when I’ll have time for either endeavor, sharing my thoughts or getting scholarly perspective, I have no idea.
But it is a fabulous book and I highly recommend it.
