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.
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