1. Dear God in Heaven, not only did I write a paragraph with three exclamation points in it, I allowed the world to see that paragraph.
2. I sometimes get an inordinate amount of pleasure from waking up at 5:30 in the morning (particularly if I'm waking up to read the paper or drink coffee, not if it's because someone under four feet tall is standing right next to the bed, breathing noisily until I wake up).
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Saturday, January 26, 2008
And Now We are (Almost) Six...
As of this time tomorrow we can tally up six years of life for Elder Girleen! Six years of parenthood for the Husband and myself! Almost three years of sisterhood for Younger Girleen! The world spins on its axis, time moves inexorably forward. Life is good.
When Elder Girleen turned one, I started a ritual, which was to write her a birthday letter every year. This makes me sound like I have my shit together a lot better than I actually do, in fact, it almost makes me sound like one of those uber-moms you read about in magazines or crafty blogs who do beautiful and meaningful things for and with their kids while the rest of us are down in the weeds wiping snot-nosed faces and wondering what happened to our youths (or putting together homemade valentines all alone while the kids who were supposed to benefit from the project pull the cat's tail out of boredom).
So just in case you're forming that kind of opinion about me from reading this, just remember that this too is a narrative, and think upon the pristine surface it displays.
Most years, I read over the birthday letter I've just written and cringe, because it sounds so silly. But with time, everything acquires a lovely patina. And because of that, and because virtual space has become such a good way to document and save and organize things, I was tempted to use this space as the piece of paper this year's letter is written on.
But then, on second thought...
What you write to your first born and what you write for posterity and what you write for a blog are all very different things. Right now I"m doing some freelance work that involves reading a lot of personal essays or manifestos or ... I'm not sure what you'd call them... (and I won't be any less vague than that) and — talk about the Wry Jocularity School of Parenthood Writing!!!
Maybe it's not just parenthood that lends itself to such a genre: all the essays I'm reading right now are pretty wry and jocular. And there's a time and a place for that, but .... you got to be careful about these things.
I'm sure there are many social, political, and aesthetic reasons why Wry Jocularity (I know I'm just as guilty of it as the next mom, so I"m not throwing stones!) has become such a cultural shorthand, but I think I'd have to put the "internets" at the top of the list as a factor.
Anything written for online consumption is, rather overtly or not, addressed to some collective but nebulous "we." And just as you'd probably narrate a story differently for a group of people gathered within earshot at a cocktail party than you would for your best friend, narrative undergoes a seachange once it becomes blog fodder.
This is not necessarily bad. I love the various blogs I visit or stumble upon and I'm finding that having one myself has jump-started my creative life in a lot of ways.
But the heartfelt letter addressed to one person, the short stories... I hope they won't become the babies thrown out with the bathwater as we move toward spending more and more of our lives online.
When Elder Girleen turned one, I started a ritual, which was to write her a birthday letter every year. This makes me sound like I have my shit together a lot better than I actually do, in fact, it almost makes me sound like one of those uber-moms you read about in magazines or crafty blogs who do beautiful and meaningful things for and with their kids while the rest of us are down in the weeds wiping snot-nosed faces and wondering what happened to our youths (or putting together homemade valentines all alone while the kids who were supposed to benefit from the project pull the cat's tail out of boredom).
So just in case you're forming that kind of opinion about me from reading this, just remember that this too is a narrative, and think upon the pristine surface it displays.
Most years, I read over the birthday letter I've just written and cringe, because it sounds so silly. But with time, everything acquires a lovely patina. And because of that, and because virtual space has become such a good way to document and save and organize things, I was tempted to use this space as the piece of paper this year's letter is written on.
But then, on second thought...
What you write to your first born and what you write for posterity and what you write for a blog are all very different things. Right now I"m doing some freelance work that involves reading a lot of personal essays or manifestos or ... I'm not sure what you'd call them... (and I won't be any less vague than that) and — talk about the Wry Jocularity School of Parenthood Writing!!!
Maybe it's not just parenthood that lends itself to such a genre: all the essays I'm reading right now are pretty wry and jocular. And there's a time and a place for that, but .... you got to be careful about these things.
I'm sure there are many social, political, and aesthetic reasons why Wry Jocularity (I know I'm just as guilty of it as the next mom, so I"m not throwing stones!) has become such a cultural shorthand, but I think I'd have to put the "internets" at the top of the list as a factor.
Anything written for online consumption is, rather overtly or not, addressed to some collective but nebulous "we." And just as you'd probably narrate a story differently for a group of people gathered within earshot at a cocktail party than you would for your best friend, narrative undergoes a seachange once it becomes blog fodder.
This is not necessarily bad. I love the various blogs I visit or stumble upon and I'm finding that having one myself has jump-started my creative life in a lot of ways.
But the heartfelt letter addressed to one person, the short stories... I hope they won't become the babies thrown out with the bathwater as we move toward spending more and more of our lives online.
Friday, January 25, 2008
Reading Lists
Well, some of the things on the bedside table this past November got read (particularly the ones that had the name Maisie in the title, a la Maisie Goes Camping) but most of them did not, but rather than beat ourselves up about that, we've just collected a whole new stack:
Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
Schlissel
The Turn of the Screw
James
Restless Spirits, Ghost Stories by American Women
Lundie, ed.
Beloved
Morrison
The King in the Tree
Millhauser
The Light of the Home: an Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America
Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women
Women's Voices from the Western Frontier
Butruille
The Evolution of a State
Smithwick
Nothing like a list to make you feel like you're getting things done, even if you aren't. This almost looks like the reading list for a course, and maybe it is: let's call it the-novel-I-SHALL-draft-by-the-end-of-2008 course and hope that sets a fire under me.
Right now, though, we're in the weeds.* A "freelance job" for the next few weeks, a WHOLE Kindergarten class Birthday Party for a six-year-old, tomorrow; family in town.
I'll keep you posted.
*I only worked one restaurant because of my huge fear of dropping loaded trays of food (instead I worked in libraries and as a house cleaner) but I love restaurant slang.
Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey
Schlissel
The Turn of the Screw
James
Restless Spirits, Ghost Stories by American Women
Lundie, ed.
Beloved
Morrison
The King in the Tree
Millhauser
The Light of the Home: an Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America
Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women
Women's Voices from the Western Frontier
Butruille
The Evolution of a State
Smithwick
Nothing like a list to make you feel like you're getting things done, even if you aren't. This almost looks like the reading list for a course, and maybe it is: let's call it the-novel-I-SHALL-draft-by-the-end-of-2008 course and hope that sets a fire under me.
Right now, though, we're in the weeds.* A "freelance job" for the next few weeks, a WHOLE Kindergarten class Birthday Party for a six-year-old, tomorrow; family in town.
I'll keep you posted.
*I only worked one restaurant because of my huge fear of dropping loaded trays of food (instead I worked in libraries and as a house cleaner) but I love restaurant slang.
On the Threshold...
Probably the only thing duller than watching paint dry is reading the blog of a person who has been watching paint dry, so most of you will be relieved to know that the lid has been tapped back down on the cannister of "Linen White" paint I keep stashed in the basement.
But the ability to squeeze blood from turnips might be one of the names of the blog game* so we're not quite done with housepaint yet.
In fact, now that I think about it, an ability to squeeze blood from turnips — in other words, extract nourishment from unlikely sources — might be one of the names of the motherhood game.
Slowly, slowly, the woodwork of this house gets painted. Usually by me, usually while a child is napping. We moved into this house this time of year three winters ago, when I was hugely pregnant with Younger Girleen (hugely, because even though I was only seven months pregnant at the time she was a second child and I had basically looked pregnant since before I was pregnant). That year I supervised painting rather than taking brush in hand: we did the Girleens' rooms because there's no way to spin a room with faux-painted brown walls to a three-and-a-half-year-old who has just had to move out of the house she's known since birth and is about to get a new sibling, to boot.
Next, I think I painted the door to Younger Girleen's closet during that early sleepless fugue right after she was born simply because the way it was zebra-striped with the woodwork's 1920s era brown varnish and every subsequent decades' layer of paint was really offending my addled aesthetic sense.
Last summer, I painted the sun porch that's become the writing/art/junk room because of the probably deluded sentiment that if a mother must share "her room of her own" it should at least be nicely painted.
I made it through two rooms this year, a bedroom and the hallway. Or, to be more precise, I painted a portion of the woodwork in the bedroom: I lost interest before I got to the trim that would require moving the bed.
The hallway, though — I persevered. How many times a day do I walk up and down that hallway? It runs almost the length of the house. Ten doors open off it, as if this house were a boarding house, or a old-fashioned hospital or something from a fairy tale.
Lap lap goes the brush, up and down. There's something meditative about painting. Painting doors is hard, but not too hard: you have to think about it while you do it, but you can keep other thoughts going at the same time — you're using two very different portions of your brain.
Lap lap strokes the brush. Up and down. All this painting has always been done by hand. Eighty years worth! Who painted it in the 30s? Was it the woman of the house?
Lap lap strokes the brush. Who thought it would be a good idea, several decades ago, to paint the woodwork in this hallway coagulated-blood red?
I used one of the Husband's worn out t-shirts to put polish to the tarnished rosettes of the keyholes and through the oily toxic smell of Brasso, the dignified glint of brass appeared.
So many doors! So many faceted glass door knobs — a miracle they stayed unbroken through the years when this house was someplace with blood-red woodwork busily being gouged ... by what? Motorcycles being dragged down the hall? Indifference? Wild parties?
I painted doors, I tightened knobs and brass plates, and tested the seal of newly-covered door into its jamb.
I usually never think about that second when I pass through a door, my hand lightly on the knob. My mind is always on the room I just left or the one I'm moving into.
Lap lap strokes the brush. This year maybe a good resolution would be to focus on the doorways.
*Good God, how's that for a train wreck of cliches?
But the ability to squeeze blood from turnips might be one of the names of the blog game* so we're not quite done with housepaint yet.
In fact, now that I think about it, an ability to squeeze blood from turnips — in other words, extract nourishment from unlikely sources — might be one of the names of the motherhood game.
Slowly, slowly, the woodwork of this house gets painted. Usually by me, usually while a child is napping. We moved into this house this time of year three winters ago, when I was hugely pregnant with Younger Girleen (hugely, because even though I was only seven months pregnant at the time she was a second child and I had basically looked pregnant since before I was pregnant). That year I supervised painting rather than taking brush in hand: we did the Girleens' rooms because there's no way to spin a room with faux-painted brown walls to a three-and-a-half-year-old who has just had to move out of the house she's known since birth and is about to get a new sibling, to boot.
Next, I think I painted the door to Younger Girleen's closet during that early sleepless fugue right after she was born simply because the way it was zebra-striped with the woodwork's 1920s era brown varnish and every subsequent decades' layer of paint was really offending my addled aesthetic sense.
Last summer, I painted the sun porch that's become the writing/art/junk room because of the probably deluded sentiment that if a mother must share "her room of her own" it should at least be nicely painted.
I made it through two rooms this year, a bedroom and the hallway. Or, to be more precise, I painted a portion of the woodwork in the bedroom: I lost interest before I got to the trim that would require moving the bed.
The hallway, though — I persevered. How many times a day do I walk up and down that hallway? It runs almost the length of the house. Ten doors open off it, as if this house were a boarding house, or a old-fashioned hospital or something from a fairy tale.
Lap lap goes the brush, up and down. There's something meditative about painting. Painting doors is hard, but not too hard: you have to think about it while you do it, but you can keep other thoughts going at the same time — you're using two very different portions of your brain.
Lap lap strokes the brush. Up and down. All this painting has always been done by hand. Eighty years worth! Who painted it in the 30s? Was it the woman of the house?
Lap lap strokes the brush. Who thought it would be a good idea, several decades ago, to paint the woodwork in this hallway coagulated-blood red?
I used one of the Husband's worn out t-shirts to put polish to the tarnished rosettes of the keyholes and through the oily toxic smell of Brasso, the dignified glint of brass appeared.
So many doors! So many faceted glass door knobs — a miracle they stayed unbroken through the years when this house was someplace with blood-red woodwork busily being gouged ... by what? Motorcycles being dragged down the hall? Indifference? Wild parties?
I painted doors, I tightened knobs and brass plates, and tested the seal of newly-covered door into its jamb.
I usually never think about that second when I pass through a door, my hand lightly on the knob. My mind is always on the room I just left or the one I'm moving into.
Lap lap strokes the brush. This year maybe a good resolution would be to focus on the doorways.
*Good God, how's that for a train wreck of cliches?
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
State of the Union: January 22, 2008
Snow, snow, glorious snow! Feathery, quarter-sized flakes, perfect for packing into snowballs. Now it's just cold and my thin blood's resisting getting out in the weather, business-as-usual. My hat's off to Minnesota moms who deal with the hats-and-mitten dance daily for months.
Yes, the snow was three days ago and is entirely gone now, but this is the south, after all: it'll take a week for us to get back to normal.
Yes, the snow was three days ago and is entirely gone now, but this is the south, after all: it'll take a week for us to get back to normal.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The Pristine Surface
This morning I for some reason brushed my hair a little more attentively than usual and discovered that the crown of my head was highlighted with streaks of white latex paint.
I wasn't entirely surprised this had happened: every year right about this time, I become preoccupied with house-painting.
I suspect I develop this preoccupation because it's winter and because both girls have just been home from school for two weeks, and I've been spending a lot of time in the house — time that just happens to be mostly spent playing Candy Land and the Dora Memory Game for hours. Now, I like playing Candy Land just as much as the next mom, but you know, sometimes your mind... wanders. You stare off into space. And since I'm usually sitting on the floor while this is going on it's really easy to start noticing the way that all the woodwork in the house is covered with fingerprints, crayon, dog nose smears from the owners two before us, floor stain from the sloppy job the owners before us did of refinishing only one third of the floors in the house, etc. It's only a matter of time before I pick up a brush.
But the thing about painting is... once you paint the woodwork, it highlights how grubby the walls are. And if you start down that obsessive path (which I have not, not yet), then you notice how shabby everything that furnishes the room is. Oh yeah, and all those brass door knobs! They'd look tons better without dingy paint (in layers: from that 1940s-era, arsenic-like green, to pink, to gray to white) all over them.
Oh, the concept of the pristine surface! Say what we might, it can suck us all in!
The woodwork in our house is as covered with "dings" as the door panels of somebody's mistreated beater car. As I slap the refreshing coat of latex atop it, I think to myself that if I really want to do the job right, I should be sanding first. I should be slathering on spackle. I should...
What does this have to do with anything?
Two days ago, I frittered away my single free hour online uncovering what'd become of former college chums, in the process demoralizing myself with thoughts of how successful they were and how little they had aged.
I love the technological advances the internet has given us, and no way do I want to turn the clock back. But it's so easy for me to forget that what the internet is best at is selling... whether what it's selling is a thing, a person or a place.
That pristine surface: I suppose if you googled me, I might even seem to have one.
So... in the service of full disclosure...
That was not white paint. It was gray hair.
I wasn't entirely surprised this had happened: every year right about this time, I become preoccupied with house-painting.
I suspect I develop this preoccupation because it's winter and because both girls have just been home from school for two weeks, and I've been spending a lot of time in the house — time that just happens to be mostly spent playing Candy Land and the Dora Memory Game for hours. Now, I like playing Candy Land just as much as the next mom, but you know, sometimes your mind... wanders. You stare off into space. And since I'm usually sitting on the floor while this is going on it's really easy to start noticing the way that all the woodwork in the house is covered with fingerprints, crayon, dog nose smears from the owners two before us, floor stain from the sloppy job the owners before us did of refinishing only one third of the floors in the house, etc. It's only a matter of time before I pick up a brush.
But the thing about painting is... once you paint the woodwork, it highlights how grubby the walls are. And if you start down that obsessive path (which I have not, not yet), then you notice how shabby everything that furnishes the room is. Oh yeah, and all those brass door knobs! They'd look tons better without dingy paint (in layers: from that 1940s-era, arsenic-like green, to pink, to gray to white) all over them.
Oh, the concept of the pristine surface! Say what we might, it can suck us all in!
The woodwork in our house is as covered with "dings" as the door panels of somebody's mistreated beater car. As I slap the refreshing coat of latex atop it, I think to myself that if I really want to do the job right, I should be sanding first. I should be slathering on spackle. I should...
What does this have to do with anything?
Two days ago, I frittered away my single free hour online uncovering what'd become of former college chums, in the process demoralizing myself with thoughts of how successful they were and how little they had aged.
I love the technological advances the internet has given us, and no way do I want to turn the clock back. But it's so easy for me to forget that what the internet is best at is selling... whether what it's selling is a thing, a person or a place.
That pristine surface: I suppose if you googled me, I might even seem to have one.
So... in the service of full disclosure...
That was not white paint. It was gray hair.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Static (of the Internal Sort)
Saturday morning I took the Girleens + an additional child to the park and the weather was pretty warm, the sky boundlessly blue and, because it was Saturday, I'd lingered over my coffee, which always gives my day a rosy glow. All these things combined, along with the fact that I was willing to engage the kids (one of whom was mopey) in a rousing game of Follow the Leader, convinced me for about 7.3 minutes that I was ... if not a wonderful mother, a pretty damned nice one.
And me? I admit it: I spent the one free hour I had this morning Googling college roommates I've lost touch with. I don't know what possessed me, but there you go. I won't bore you with the a list of the legion of things people I once knew have done: let's just say being a guest at the White House is in there (I submit this to show their fame, not because I really want to go to the White House), along with being on TV. Every single one of them looks exactly the way they did twenty-four years ago.
Sometimes the World Wide Web is the Devil's right hand.
In the service of that Follow the Leader Game, I slid down the slide on my stomach and now have slide burns on both elbows and seem to have done something to an important muscle in my back.
This is why adults are not supposed to PLAY with kids.
Yesterday was balmy but today is colder, and the forecast is for sleet by Wednesday: as the weather changes, so does my vision of myself as quality caregiver. This morning I sloshed coffee down the front of my nightgown while I was fixing Younger Girleen's lunch (an act which made me bear more than a passing resemblance to a wino with a Thunderbird-stained front). Elder Girleen happily headed off to school with .... marshmallow... in her hair and Younger Girleen's hair didn't even get combed. (Although in my own defense I have to say that because Younger Girleen's hair is kinda curly, leaving it uncombed is not such a big deal).
And me? I admit it: I spent the one free hour I had this morning Googling college roommates I've lost touch with. I don't know what possessed me, but there you go. I won't bore you with the a list of the legion of things people I once knew have done: let's just say being a guest at the White House is in there (I submit this to show their fame, not because I really want to go to the White House), along with being on TV. Every single one of them looks exactly the way they did twenty-four years ago.
Sometimes the World Wide Web is the Devil's right hand.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Static and Grit
A pale January sky today, stitched up with vapor trails, but it's not just that that tells me we're settled into winter and, because the season's so short in this neck of the woods, at the same time teetering on the cusp of spring.
Lady Liberty is back.
And I was so pleased to see her on the corner yesterday in front of Liberty Tax Service— or rather him, since yesterday's Lady Liberty was a guy with dreads clad in his paid-by-the-hour work attire of the tax season of patina'd copper green gown and foam rubber liberty crown — that I realized that with time, ANYTHING is possible. I have begun having great feelings of affection for Atlanta.
Extraordinary! All it took was TEN years. Before that, the places I chose to live were always college towns: let's call them Disneyland for Hipsters I and Disneyland for Hipsters II. Better bookstores, better public services, better dressed baristas in the coffee shops. How on earth could Atlanta hold a candle to that?
My relationship with Atlanta was pretty similar to that of two people in an arranged marriage: it made sense as far as the business of my life went (ie, it possessed the job for the Husband that allowed us to escape my childhood bedroom, where we'd been living for the past six months) but love it I did not.
For years, my motto as far as living here went was close your eyes and think of England.*
But more and more frequently, I open my eyes and look around at the Atlanta I live in, down at its heels, corrupt and urban, full of grit and static, and realize that, though my feelings for it don't match the passion of first love and I would never dream of defending it over someplace really nice, like say, Austin, I'm glad I live here.
If I lived elsewhere, I would measure the arrival of spring by the emergence of the daffodils' blunt green bayonet blades. Here I have the arrival of Lady Liberty, who will stand on that corner from now until April 15.
The first year we lived here, an inflatable Lady Liberty head was tethered to the top of Liberty Tax Service, a sight as post-apocalyptic as the listing statue on the beach in Planet of the Apes. Now we've just got Lady Liberty, who works from 8 in the morning until 8 at night, who stands on the same corner where a few years back two very large prostitutes stood soliciting business while we ate dinner in the brand-new pizza place across the street and watched them through the plate glass window. Lady Liberty, who is sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes black and sometimes white, but is always one of the most oppressed people on the planet, at least as far as their employment goes. Trucks honk their horns at them. The corner is not a particular scenic place to spend an entire day.
I loved those Disneylands for Hipsters where I came of age, oh, how passionately. But this morning after dropping off Younger Girleen at school, I stood in line at my fav coffee shop (the one that offers me my large special friend) and thought how glossy those places were (and still are). Here, on the other hand, I've got an unfashionable bald guy in front of me with scuffed shoes, one of the barista's tattoos are old-prison-tattoo green, and the other barista is a little oily and probably didn't shower before he came in to work.
Depeche Mode's Master and Servant was playing on the sound system. Let's play ... master and servant whoever the lead singer of Depeche Mode was warbled.
Let's NOT, the barista opined as I walked out the door.
Oh, Atlanta, you may be a lame, out-of-date city, but you're my lame, out-of-date city.
*I'm thrilled by this opportunity to spin the arranged marriage metaphor past its breaking point.
Lady Liberty is back.
And I was so pleased to see her on the corner yesterday in front of Liberty Tax Service— or rather him, since yesterday's Lady Liberty was a guy with dreads clad in his paid-by-the-hour work attire of the tax season of patina'd copper green gown and foam rubber liberty crown — that I realized that with time, ANYTHING is possible. I have begun having great feelings of affection for Atlanta.
Extraordinary! All it took was TEN years. Before that, the places I chose to live were always college towns: let's call them Disneyland for Hipsters I and Disneyland for Hipsters II. Better bookstores, better public services, better dressed baristas in the coffee shops. How on earth could Atlanta hold a candle to that?
My relationship with Atlanta was pretty similar to that of two people in an arranged marriage: it made sense as far as the business of my life went (ie, it possessed the job for the Husband that allowed us to escape my childhood bedroom, where we'd been living for the past six months) but love it I did not.
For years, my motto as far as living here went was close your eyes and think of England.*
But more and more frequently, I open my eyes and look around at the Atlanta I live in, down at its heels, corrupt and urban, full of grit and static, and realize that, though my feelings for it don't match the passion of first love and I would never dream of defending it over someplace really nice, like say, Austin, I'm glad I live here.
If I lived elsewhere, I would measure the arrival of spring by the emergence of the daffodils' blunt green bayonet blades. Here I have the arrival of Lady Liberty, who will stand on that corner from now until April 15.
The first year we lived here, an inflatable Lady Liberty head was tethered to the top of Liberty Tax Service, a sight as post-apocalyptic as the listing statue on the beach in Planet of the Apes. Now we've just got Lady Liberty, who works from 8 in the morning until 8 at night, who stands on the same corner where a few years back two very large prostitutes stood soliciting business while we ate dinner in the brand-new pizza place across the street and watched them through the plate glass window. Lady Liberty, who is sometimes old, sometimes young, sometimes male, sometimes female, sometimes black and sometimes white, but is always one of the most oppressed people on the planet, at least as far as their employment goes. Trucks honk their horns at them. The corner is not a particular scenic place to spend an entire day.
I loved those Disneylands for Hipsters where I came of age, oh, how passionately. But this morning after dropping off Younger Girleen at school, I stood in line at my fav coffee shop (the one that offers me my large special friend) and thought how glossy those places were (and still are). Here, on the other hand, I've got an unfashionable bald guy in front of me with scuffed shoes, one of the barista's tattoos are old-prison-tattoo green, and the other barista is a little oily and probably didn't shower before he came in to work.
Depeche Mode's Master and Servant was playing on the sound system. Let's play ... master and servant whoever the lead singer of Depeche Mode was warbled.
Let's NOT, the barista opined as I walked out the door.
Oh, Atlanta, you may be a lame, out-of-date city, but you're my lame, out-of-date city.
*I'm thrilled by this opportunity to spin the arranged marriage metaphor past its breaking point.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The Pursuit of Happiness...(Dispatches from the Front)
Younger Girleen is currently very interested in figuring out the concept of Happiness (and the concept of unhappiness, for that matter).
Are you happy? she asks. Are you not happy? When something doesn't go her way, she roars like a small lion and then turns her tear-stained face toward me, sobbing I'm NOT HAPPY. It turns out that she's one of those children capable of hyperventilating the second she starts crying, so she can barely get the words out, and that makes it just that much more heart-wrenching.
The endearing thing is that, a minute or two later, after I've hugged her, or distracted her, or read her If You Take A Mouse to the Movies just one more time, she looks at me earnestly and says: I'm happy now.
She is wonderfully self-possessed, and not just that, she has lightning-fast powers of recovery. What if we were all that articulate, and wouldn't it be great if reading If You Take a Mouse to the Movies (something I've read until my eyeballs could fall out) could change your mood so quickly?
I know I'll forget things like this before I know it (poor, Elder Girleen, I already forgot most of her cute two-isms!), so just for posterity's sake:
Oatmeal has been transformed into Eatmeal.
Daddy, daddy she wailed the other night. I need a Kleenex. I got BURGERS.
Are you happy? she asks. Are you not happy? When something doesn't go her way, she roars like a small lion and then turns her tear-stained face toward me, sobbing I'm NOT HAPPY. It turns out that she's one of those children capable of hyperventilating the second she starts crying, so she can barely get the words out, and that makes it just that much more heart-wrenching.
The endearing thing is that, a minute or two later, after I've hugged her, or distracted her, or read her If You Take A Mouse to the Movies just one more time, she looks at me earnestly and says: I'm happy now.
She is wonderfully self-possessed, and not just that, she has lightning-fast powers of recovery. What if we were all that articulate, and wouldn't it be great if reading If You Take a Mouse to the Movies (something I've read until my eyeballs could fall out) could change your mood so quickly?
I know I'll forget things like this before I know it (poor, Elder Girleen, I already forgot most of her cute two-isms!), so just for posterity's sake:
Oatmeal has been transformed into Eatmeal.
Daddy, daddy she wailed the other night. I need a Kleenex. I got BURGERS.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Then vs. Now
Who knows why one starts thinking about something... it may have been the "lose ten pounds" uttered but unuttered resolution (isn't it cool how I did that?) that led me to it, but for some reason the other day I remembered/realized, with a combination of nostalgia and horror, that way back in the day (ie, my late teens/early twenties) it used to take me TWO HOURS to get dressed to go out at night.
Well, "going out" (in other words, presenting oneself to the world as a creature worthy of the world's interest) has not been part of my life since the days of the dinosaurs, but nowadays, I pride myself on how quickly I can get myself ready to leave the house: the less time I spend on that, the more I can spend on quality things... like reading a magazine, drinking a cup of coffee, tinkering with the way this blog looks. I can shower in three minutes. I no longer futz about with hair dryers, make-up, interesting clothes. In short, I am a fashion dud, and that saves a lot of time.
Back in the day, when I spent those hours on grooming, it's not like I was painstakingly shellacking a 'do onto the top of my head or trowelling on the make-up (though for a while I was partial to heavily-kohled eyes); it's more that getting ready to go out was an aesthetic process.
Back then, I worked at a vintage clothing store and received a portion of my pay in clothes (one of my favorite pastimes was spending the hour before closing on Saturday nights picking a new outfit for the evening), which might give an idea of what I mean here: we're talking dressing as a performative act. A leather miniskirt that belonged to the wife of the owner of Capricorn Records during the Allman Bros heyday. Brocaded sixties cocktail dresses. Midriff baring shell tops with sequins lying close as fish scales. Paisley-patterned cotton dresses worthy of the best 50s' housewife, way too big and belted with a leather belt, accessorized with granny boots.
Imagine the scene: victorian house, chopped up into rentals, complete with sofa on the front porch. The younger version of myself examining herself in the round Deco mirror of a vanity with peeling veneer picked up at Goodwill. She has to try on at least five outfits. The mirror of the vanity must be hung with twinkling Christmas lights. The music on the stereo must be a tad melancholy (rainy nights and Leonard Cohen singing Chelsea Hotel, perhaps?)
Oh, those were innocent days, weren't they?
For a while, the store where I worked also carried mid-century modern housegoods: gaudy lamps with swooping shades, McCoy vases. Big yawn as far as I was concerned, though I was happy to sell them to elderly hipsters (as I considered those over 30 to be) . Clothes were what it was all about. They were where it was AT. The rest was secondary (though, thankfully, I did spend some of my pay on a few of those lamps).
But here's an interesting thing: While mucking about with the header of this blog yesterday, which on one level is the biggest time-suckage imaginable, I realized that I may not spend any time dressing myself these days, but it's not that I no longer care about aesthetics — it's just that the focus of my desire for attractive aesthetics has changed.
Clothes were once my armor, my palette; were plumage and shell I took creative joy in embellishing. And just as I once took pleasure in putting together an outfit, I now take pleasure in putting together my house, my yard (though whether anybody else in the world would agree with the success of these efforts is debatable, I realize).
Is it motherhood or larger cultural currents that've caused this shift? On one hand, back in the day when I was getting myself up like a cross between Cyndi Lauper and Jacki O, who would've dreamed that an entire nation would someday become obsessed with "home improvement"? On the other hand, my life is mostly played out on a domestic stage these days and I spend a heck of a lot of time here.
Back in those old days, when I was young and foolish and judgmental (and sure I knew EVERYTHING) I perceived anything more than a minimum of attention paid to ones surroundings as a particularly vacuous past-time. And now here I am, fiddling with how this blog (which is viewed by an audience of no more than ten) looks.
Well, "going out" (in other words, presenting oneself to the world as a creature worthy of the world's interest) has not been part of my life since the days of the dinosaurs, but nowadays, I pride myself on how quickly I can get myself ready to leave the house: the less time I spend on that, the more I can spend on quality things... like reading a magazine, drinking a cup of coffee, tinkering with the way this blog looks. I can shower in three minutes. I no longer futz about with hair dryers, make-up, interesting clothes. In short, I am a fashion dud, and that saves a lot of time.
Back in the day, when I spent those hours on grooming, it's not like I was painstakingly shellacking a 'do onto the top of my head or trowelling on the make-up (though for a while I was partial to heavily-kohled eyes); it's more that getting ready to go out was an aesthetic process.
Back then, I worked at a vintage clothing store and received a portion of my pay in clothes (one of my favorite pastimes was spending the hour before closing on Saturday nights picking a new outfit for the evening), which might give an idea of what I mean here: we're talking dressing as a performative act. A leather miniskirt that belonged to the wife of the owner of Capricorn Records during the Allman Bros heyday. Brocaded sixties cocktail dresses. Midriff baring shell tops with sequins lying close as fish scales. Paisley-patterned cotton dresses worthy of the best 50s' housewife, way too big and belted with a leather belt, accessorized with granny boots.
Imagine the scene: victorian house, chopped up into rentals, complete with sofa on the front porch. The younger version of myself examining herself in the round Deco mirror of a vanity with peeling veneer picked up at Goodwill. She has to try on at least five outfits. The mirror of the vanity must be hung with twinkling Christmas lights. The music on the stereo must be a tad melancholy (rainy nights and Leonard Cohen singing Chelsea Hotel, perhaps?)
Oh, those were innocent days, weren't they?
For a while, the store where I worked also carried mid-century modern housegoods: gaudy lamps with swooping shades, McCoy vases. Big yawn as far as I was concerned, though I was happy to sell them to elderly hipsters (as I considered those over 30 to be) . Clothes were what it was all about. They were where it was AT. The rest was secondary (though, thankfully, I did spend some of my pay on a few of those lamps).
But here's an interesting thing: While mucking about with the header of this blog yesterday, which on one level is the biggest time-suckage imaginable, I realized that I may not spend any time dressing myself these days, but it's not that I no longer care about aesthetics — it's just that the focus of my desire for attractive aesthetics has changed.
Clothes were once my armor, my palette; were plumage and shell I took creative joy in embellishing. And just as I once took pleasure in putting together an outfit, I now take pleasure in putting together my house, my yard (though whether anybody else in the world would agree with the success of these efforts is debatable, I realize).
Is it motherhood or larger cultural currents that've caused this shift? On one hand, back in the day when I was getting myself up like a cross between Cyndi Lauper and Jacki O, who would've dreamed that an entire nation would someday become obsessed with "home improvement"? On the other hand, my life is mostly played out on a domestic stage these days and I spend a heck of a lot of time here.
Back in those old days, when I was young and foolish and judgmental (and sure I knew EVERYTHING) I perceived anything more than a minimum of attention paid to ones surroundings as a particularly vacuous past-time. And now here I am, fiddling with how this blog (which is viewed by an audience of no more than ten) looks.
Friday, January 4, 2008
A New Year, A Blank Slate
To everybody who stayed loyal during this latest blog drought*: thank you! An end-of-the-year corollary to the mathematical equation that rules my life has been discovered:
So, as the new year starts, I'm a convert.
Brisk walk + Strong strong coffee (squared) - Kids in school =
Big fat zero blog entries (and writing in general).
To commemorate the new year, I should probably immortalize a list of resolutions I probably won't keep (lose ten pounds, draft the novel I've had on the back burner since Elder Girleen's birth, meaningfully augment my social life, have a house as glossy as house porn while simultaneously maintaining a satisfying and lucrative creative life, recycling more, spending less, and so on and so on...) but the girleens are still home from school, and the playing-together-quietly timebomb is ticking down, so alas for both me and you, I can't.
But the New Year is a time for ruminating after all, so I'll try to squeeze in a little mental cud-chewing before I have to go break up a fight between siblings:
The world is full of internet and blog naysayers fond of tossing out a line that goes like this — online interface is mostly just self-absorbed, one-sided navel-gazing; as prime an example of fiddling while Rome burns as ever there was.
I won't argue the validity of such a position, but five months of doing this has made me happily aware that friendships formed online are, in fact, legitimate friendships, and besides that, the internet isn't bad at serving as glue for relationships that, due to distance, motherhood, and time constraints, have been in need of tending.
So, as the new year starts, I'm a convert.
*Mainly The Husband, who checks in a couple of times a day, even if he knows I'm... like, off at the dentist or something. Which I'm afraid says a lot more about the compulsive nature of the internet than it does about the deathless nature of my prose.
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