Improbable Things

Spinning a yarn... at the Nature Company

[I used to enjoy telling stories. What is the difference between telling a story and spinning a yarn? Apparently a yarn is likely to be anecdotal, informal, neither entirely fact nor fiction. Maybe it's a tall-tale. Or maybe it's the truth as I recall it. Regardless it should be a good story.]

Photo by Brewbooks

When I was 16, I scored the best retail job I could have imagined. Just that statement tells you the depths of idealism and youth I was suffering from. Retail rocked! Getting paid to do nearly anything was this wondrous concept. I'd been begging my parents to allow me to get a job and then a Nature Company opened in the new mall extension. Yes, the mall had expanded by 1/3rd and it was all so glorious and food-courty, with a new mall smell, no busted light bulbs and the back corridors didn't yet smell of old urine. It was a dream. Although they never told me for certain, I believed I was their first hire for the new store - a bright and cheerful kid who still believed retail would be fun.

We all know that was not going to last...

America, it's beautiful

Today was a remarkably mild July 4th - a day with the windows thrown open and a breeze. We spent the day talking history and politics and indulging in simple pleasures -
homemade fried chicken, steamed green beans and tomato/mozz salad, followed by naps and a dessert of berries and cream. The chicken was from an Amish farmer who delivers meats and dairy to our neighborhood, and I soaked it in some clabbered milk (slightly soured milk). The tomatoes were the first of the season, picked up at the market this morning along with the beans and berries.

It's easy to forget that we are wealthy beyond the measure of almost any people in the history of civilization. It's easy to forget that it was a long, weird, hard struggle to get here, with as many histories lost and forgotten as recorded and revered. Stories to be proud of and stories to take a hard lesson from. From share-croppers and slaves, statesmen and snake oil salesmen, the stories that get told the least are the most fascinating. When I hear America invoked as a monolithic and simplistic ideal (as, say, Glenn Beck is in the unfortunate habit of doing), it reminds me that there is no such place. America is a complex place, made of complex communities, populated by people with different dreams. It's sorting out a peaceful coexistence that is the best use of the freedoms we have.

(Just so's ya know, we also had pringles, dos equiis and hard cider. Don't mistake us for purists; we still love the junk food.)

Better

The day got better, the messes were tamed, and the expectations managed.

And really, Dooce said it all so much better.

Updated: No, actually, Chris wins this week. Whew. Way to make me feel better about my life.

No magic in our mess

This morning was unproductive mess.

A friend asked how bloggers like Soulemama can do it all - have four kids and everyday show something lovely, creative, and photogenic. It's both inspiring and demoralizing to glimpse into her world. I'm sure there is a less picturesque and multi-faceted reality behind the lovely photos. There always is. The question is whether we write those stories for our adoring public or edit it all to look peachy-keen. Regardless, the result is a love-hate relationship with bloggers like Soulemama or Knitting Iris. Mostly love, except when my day is below any inspiration.

They say each day counts. Please, say that isn't true. Some days just shouldn't count. Grace days, do-overs, days to just let go of trying to get ahead or stay on top and to just give up and read your book while the messes accumulate. Some days are all mess. An unholy ungodly mess.

I've made a promise to myself that I won't start any new projects and am instead trying to finish up long-standing and neglected projects. In order to tackle anything, I wait for WeeC to crash for a nap and then I set WeeE up with a project and cross my fingers for some cooperative time.

This morning we tried the stamps with washable tempura (rec'd from a preschool art teacher). I covered her table with newsprint (so no worries about spills or clean-up), put only a dab of color in the egg-carton top and gave her the simple designs to print herself. I drew some landscapes (ex: water for the ducks, or tractors, if that's your speed) and then I bounced back and forth from her project to mine just a few feet away in the bathroom.

While she was stamping I was cursing contractors and poorly made (but still expensive) bathroom hardware, digging in a sloppy cluttered half stained shed for WD-40 and in my cluttered disorganized office for teeny tiny screws... all in an attempt to, finally, six months later hang a toilet paper holder.

11:30 am and all I could count as progress today was one toilet paper holder and some folded dish towels. Anyone want pictures of those?

::deep breath:::

My life is not like Soulemama's. My house is cute. My kids are cute. But the messes are real and frustrating. WD-40 and crappy kids art. The things I work on are not a dainty, cute, handmade accoutrement to my thrifted furniture. Instead I have uninspired brand new things break or do not fit. Instead I resort to Mary Poppins on the TV so I can organize the craft stuff because it's all so messy that we don't do any crafts.

Oh and Mary Poppins is part of the problem too! Don't we all wish we were magical and could bring carousel horses to life? Although if she were really magical, she'd fix Dick Van Dyke's British accent. Ouch!

The Mom Bench

I stepped into our future last night. Took my 13 yo cousin to Georgetown to go shopping (her big wish on this trip). I left the lil ones behind because, although the 13 yo is a fabulous kid, they all move at such different paces and want such different things... so I left Bill with the Wees and took Maya.

It was complete culture shock for me.
1) you can leave 13 yos out of sight (though perhaps you should not). I still hover because my kids are small and it was nice and a little weird to be able to browse the books at the bookstore in peace.
2) they move even more slowly than toddlers. I can't tell why, but there is no appreciable increase in speed between 3 and 13, just different reasons for the delay.
3) they have an absolute lack of decision-making ability, this one due to intense brain power and overthinking. Thirty minutes in the changing room should be enough to make nearly any life decision, much less a decision between small and medium of the same top.

If you saw me out last night, I was the mom-est of all mom-like people in Georgetown. I am not the hot, hip mom. I'm the pudgy stout earthy mom who does not look cool sitting on the mom-bench at the Urban Outfitters. It's a shirt/tunic/dress thing and I show my distance from popular fashion because I can't determine which is which any more. I might get points for reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to kill the time. I got a pass this time because I was taking my cousin out in the big city - which means I was kinda cool - but my own kids won't cut me any slack.

I came home last night and cuddled my happy clingy 3 yo and my happy sleepless 5 mo old and begged them not to grow up too fast. I'm not ready for long long long conversations about which lipgloss better expresses your innermost being. I'm not ready for the mom bench at the teeny bopper stores. Not yet. And maybe not ever. How do you raise tomboys? Anyow know?

WeeE is Now Three!

She dreams. She plans. She knows the rules and she'll make sure you do too. She cares for her sister. She shares (sometimes).

She does it, herself, whatever 'it' might be. She likes and she dislikes. She runs and runs... and runs. She has band-aids. She plays tea-time. She stirs.

She climbs. She falls. She climbs again. She rides. She paints. She does Projects (capital P).

Happy Birthday, WeeE. Now you are Three.

Five months and thoughts on productivity

WeeC is five months old today.

She is all kissable chub and giggles, which is infectious. Kisses and giggles go together with babies, so much so that I've caught myself trying to tickle Bill when giving him a goodbye kiss.

To me, she looks less and less like WeeE everyday, each day becoming more herself. She LOVES to eat her oatmeal and tries to steal whatever I am drinking. She is almost able to sit, meaning she totters for longer durations before slowly, oh so slowly, kipping over to one side. She recently *noticed* the dogs for the first time and now she loves to knead at Sophie's hair. No one can cure her bad mood as quickly as her sister.

Looking back, when WeeE (who may soon graduate to being BigE) was 5 months, I lost my job. Staying a working mom was core to my goals back then and I barely took any maternity. I was working from home within hours of giving birth, even if it was only checking emails and updating a database. But the part-time arrangements I negotiated didn't last long and soon I was unemployed. I had not been unemployed since I was 13 years old. In 20 years, I'd been an office manager, a dental assistant, a temp, a special education teacher, a waitress, an insurance salesperson, a repo officer for a mobile home company, a teacher, an farm hand on an Arabian horse farm, a campus sustainability educator, a web designer, an editor, a librarian, a publishing assistant... and probably a few other things. Before you assume that makes me a job hopper, think about the job opportunities available to your average 15 year old. I worked two and three jobs at a time and took different placements in the summer when my hours were longer. I did that all through college and even into my professional years. As an intern, breaking into the environmental job market, I had to work a second job as a bookseller to meet my meager rent, meager because I swapped some childcare in exchange for lower rates.

Being unemployed was and remains strange and uncomfortable to me. Two and a half years later, I'm still unemployed, a Stay at Home Mom. I am still not graceful in balancing my love of my kids with my love of working. I swing back and forth in my acceptance and patience with being out of my career. Bill and I had the work vs home conversation again this morning and I'll keep looking for the perfect part-time paid situation.

(Yes, they are watching TV. Yes, I've caved to the TV. PBSKids on digital is awesome!)

And I'll keep enjoying the time I have with them... to be grateful for how this adventure is unfolding. I keep thinking to myself that it'll all make perfect sense when I look back on it in 10 years. There's just no knowing how exactly the path will lead from here to there.

Disappointments

I failed the test. Likely by one or two questions. It was close, but close doesn't count. My hovering career suffered a loss of altitude.... It was just a test and I don't want to let it have symbolic value, but...

Someday, when I am back at work and this prolonged gap as a stay-at-home-mom, volunteer, freelancer, home renovator, community organizer is behind me, I'll laugh at how insecure and scared I felt. Today though, I feel insecure and scared. I know the impact on a woman's earning power to have a gap in employment. And that was before the economy caved in. I know that the time I spend with my kids is precious, priceless, the most important thing I could be doing right now.

Another night, I might explore the nuanced difference between being important and having value, but I'm trying not to feed my sour mood. Suffice to say, I know parenting is important but I doubt our society truly values it. And, between you and me, feeling under-valued and a little desperate does not make you look good in a job interview. Just sayin'.

Enough. Moving on from this, there is a summer to enjoy, some un-improving books to read, and more house and garden work to get done. Back to my regularly scheduled life.

Expectations

This is sort of an open letter to my life partner.

“I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations.” Calvin/Bill Watterson

It's much easier to have high expectations of others than to live up to someone else's high expectations.

I'm no slacker when it comes to unreasonable demands, on myself as much as on others. I once described my faith as "misanthropic secular humanist" because I truly madly deeply believe in the ability of every person to reach inspiring heights. We are an infinitely talented and brilliantly intelligent species. "Misanthropic" because I'm so often disappointed with what we choose to do with our time instead. So few people try very hard to do anything impressive. If we all spent more time improving ourselves instead of watching reality TV, what a wonderful world it might be.

This will not make me an easy mother, to be or to have.

Today though, I'm facing more than the mundane occurrence of me failing to meet my own expectations. I'm dreading the possibility of failing to meet YOUR expectations. You've given me another full weekend without obligations in order to study. You've put so much support behind me that I find it uncomfortable. Discomfort isn't per se a bad thing. We grow when we reach out of our comfort zone. Generally when I push myself to my limits, the only person I had to worry about disappointing was me but I know I will always forgive myself. I'm less blithe about disappointing you. It's got me tangled up in knots.

Tomorrow I'll take this infernal exam. Before I go back to my studies, let's put this in perspective.

I'm taking a test, nothing more. Passing or failing it will be a measure of something, but not of my worth. I'd rather measure my worth in a currency of attempts made. It means something to try, right? I'm doing this, cold-turkey, self-taught, with the decidedly unhelpful influences of a newborn and a preschooler. If I don't pass, it won't mean much. I can't allow it to mean much because my career is only there hovering because of my sheer will to believe in it and I can't afford to weaken my belief.  I know what I want and I'll get it regardless of the results on a computerized exam tomorrow.

If I pass, it will give me a few more letters behind my name, to share space with the MURP. If I pass, it's a bit of updraft in my career's long hover, waiting for the next direction it takes.

I love my once- and future-career. This test and its results won't change that. I also love my family and work to live up to your highest expectations. The test and its result won't change that either.

Now that I've parked those anxieties here, I'm back to the studying.

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”  Michelangelo

Defense against darkening skies

Today the news was too much for me. Too many people hating too deeply. Spreading fear. I can't live in fear. It's not in me. I won't feed them. So, stories.....

Our Sunday night guests brought a bounty of sour cherries, so I spent a few hours today and last night pitting them and freezing them. WeeE wants pink cupcakes for her birthday, so I'm planning on making sour cherry muffins (with perhaps some food coloring to help it along).

The rain still hasn't let up. We've had storms and rain every night, including an epic convergence of clouds last night. Bill and I stood out in the yard and watched the roiling, boiling clouds as they moved together, seemingly coming in from all directions. I wondered briefly if we'd get a tornado, but instead the clouds formed what must have been miles-high column formations, all in a row, a huge moving living cloud architecture. Some folks got some images... but none were able to captured the wind, the pull of the inversion, the inevitable draw to look skyward.

We've pulled out of the summer playschool. I felt conflicted about this because WeeE loves school and I felt I wanted the head-space of a few hours each day. But WeeC still does not subscribe to regular sleep habits and it began to feel like a huge drag to get WeeE to school each day. I wanted flexibility, less structure, fewer obligations. It's sad, but packing lunches, brushing hair, and being on-time are all out of my league right now. So what if it means a few unscheduled days where WeeE spends way too much time watching PBSKids programming. A little boredom is a rite of passage for summers, yes?

On the upside, it means we plan our own fieldtrips.

• We've been to the Silver Spring fountain, where WeeE ran into the water for the first time. Of course, it was an unplanned excursion, so I didn't even have a towel or change. She got to ride home mostly nekid, which is just dandy by this almost-3-yo.
• We spent a day on the Mall, riding the carousel there and visiting the whale at the Natural History Museum.
• We toured the National Museum of Health and Medicine of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (NMHM) - where we saw an exhibit on Macauley's How We Work and some amazing medical exhibits. I'm not sure which was more educational/fascinating - the fetuses in jars or the Civil War medicine exhibit. It is not a museum for the faint of heart.
• And today, we went to Glen Echo for the first time. Magical. We will be back.