Outside Inside

Outside the air quality suffers. The haze is thick, the scent is acrid. Smoke is visible at about a half-mile. It’s very odd, as the sun shines through, the sky is gray-white, and the horizon is obliterated. There are about 800 wildfires burning in Northern California (last I heard). So we aren’t going on many walks or park dates at this time.

Inside, Bean continues to charm, amuse, and endear herself to us. When I read her Sandra Boynton’s A to Z book and get to the “K, Kangaroo Kissing,” she makes the kiss noise. She crawls around holding onto a small toy or sock with one hand. Sometimes she tries holding something in both while crawling and pulling up and finds this challenging. She is pulling up on everything and terrorizing the cat. I think the fourth upper tooth is finally breaking through. She chews clothes, toys, fingers. Bean feeds herself Cheerios now with good dexterity. She is all-around wonderful!

Her aunt LR arrives on Sunday for a week. We’re looking forward to lots of bonding.

Escape

Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.

–T.S. Eliot

45

I have 45 minutes to write this, so we’ll see what pours out.

Today
I have a beautiful nine-month-old daughter who is pulling up and longs to stand by herself. She is starting to cruise. She’s becoming more aware and more of a little individual daily. Today I am physically and mentally healthy. Today I am in a secure, strong, happy marriage. Today I am able to stay home to raise my daughter, while Husband works at a good company at a job he enjoys. Today dinner will be a hefty ribeye steak with corn on the cob and a nice Syrah, followed by Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey ice cream for dessert. I am loved and enjoy a beautiful life. I feel I have found my life’s calling in motherhood. I didn’t realize this was the case, that this is what my heart longed for all along, until Bean arrived.

2003 – 5 Years Ago
On this day, I was in Syracuse visiting my parents and one of my sisters celebrating my 40th birthday. It was a lovely visit, and I felt much joy at turning 40. I resided in Austin, living with but not yet married to Husband. I had earned my certification as a Licensed Professional Counselor and, having “paid my dues” working in community mental health, I had a growing private practice. I had been blogging for one year, and in 2003 I learned a very painful lesson about what was appropriate for blogging. The lesson cost me three friendships and some deep family heartache. On the other hand, I was blessed by many friends via the Internet because of this new type of social expression and connection.

1998 – 10 Years Ago
I was attending graduate school full-time and working full-time at UT Austin. On this day that year I was arranging to get my navel pierced and deciding what my first tattoo would be. I was battling a serious bout of major depression triggered by a number of factors (working through the aftermath of a sexual assault that happened in 1994, grief over the untimely death of an animal companion, a romantic relationship gone bad with someone I worked with daily, the loss of community upon leaving a fundamentalist religion, a potentially violent scary neighbor upstairs who kept me up all night) — all of which compounded a physical disposition toward depression. (In other words, it runs in my family genes.) I was riddled with self-doubt and fear; I fought a compulsion to injure myself with sharp objects. I started Vipassana meditation this year, and this helped. Much later in the year I tried anti-depressants for the first time, and they catalyzed a dramatic improvement in my well-being.

1993 – 15 Years Ago
On this day I celebrated with friends. Co-workers bought me roses, cake, and funny balloons. On my 30th birthday I embraced a new decade. My twenties had been difficult, shrouded with depression, financial problems, confusion about my identity, and trouble becoming mentally emancipated from family dynamics. I had finally completed my bachelor’s degree at SUNY Oswego after ten arduous years. I was dreaming about a new life, which I brought about for myself in 1994 by moving to Austin, Texas.

1988 – 20 Years Ago
I had moved home briefly to live with my parents after ending a five-year relationship, because I was deeply in debt. I worked two jobs to get out of debt and save money so I could attend college full-time in 1989. I agonized over my age; every birthday in my twenties was an occasion to lambast myself for not having accomplished anything with my life. I felt time was escaping me and I was afraid.

1983 – 25 Years Ago
I was attending a business institute for secretarial studies (which I hated, but it was an act of desperation so I could become employable and independent). I worked part-time, rented a room from my parents until the end of the year. In December I moved to a room at the Mizpah tower in downtown Syracuse, a low-cost residence for women. It was a heady time, living on my own at last. I declared my sexual orientation as lesbian. I met a woman who became my companion and partner for five years.

1978 – 30 Years Ago
I was a fundamentalist born-again Catholic struggling to feel some self-worth. I was a loner in high school and had one close friend. I had poor self-esteem and felt hopeless most of the time. This was the onset of minor depression. I began writing journals in earnest.

1973 – 35 Years Ago
I was lost in a family storm. I won’t provide details out of respect for the privacy of family members.

1968 – 40 Years Ago
I was a cute little kindergartner who adored my stuffed animals and was terrified of thunderstorms. That was the year of social craziness with RFK and Martin Luther King Jr. being assassinated, plus the Tet offensive in Vietnam. I have an image from television news branded into my memory of an injured soldier with his brains outside his head on the ground. (It haunted me. What the hell were newscasters thinking?)

1963 – 45 Years Ago
I came into this world at 3:47 a.m., which explains why I’ve always been a night owl.

Life for me improved over the years. I’m aging well. 🙂 I’ve received many sweet cards and gifts today. I thought I’d share a chuckle from my brother.

My Brother, He So Funny

my brother, he so funny

The New Homemaker

I’ve discovered a new blog and resource portal that will become a staple of my reading: The New Homemaker. I was doing research on the origin of “Susie Homemaker” (which I’ve not yet found because I wandered off into this new discovery). From the About page:

Who is the New Homemaker? She is the person who has discovered that having both partners in the work world is not “having it all.” Children, elders and the community have been sacrificed for two generations to the crazy notion that households can run themselves. Well, they can’t, and never have. Working parents have struggled valiantly to “have it all,” but are increasingly saying “we’ve had enough”; someone has to be home. Even single parents are exploring ways to spend more time at home and less at work, or to work at home.

Unexpectedly at home, the New Homemaker now finds herself completely unprepared to run that household, with few resources to turn to. Skills and knowledge housekeepers took for granted for centuries have been lost in just 50 years’ time. Traditional women’s magazines are filled not with solid homemaking advice and resources, but with diets, celebrity interviews, horoscopes, romance quizzes, career advice, fashion spreads and the like. Where help is available it’s frequently packaged with religious advice that may be appropriate for some women but hardly all, or even most.

I could print the entire manifesto here, but I won’t. You should read it, however. It speaks sense.

All By Herself

Bean started pulling up this week, and yesterday she began cruising a little too. Today she pulled herself up under the dining table, and I had the camera handy. A few moments later she began to whimper, because she couldn’t figure out how to sit down again. In other places she lets go and sits down, but here she must have felt caged, or that it wasn’t safe to do that (and with the chair nearby she’s right). So I helped her.

pulling up

I am her personal jungle gym. She’s changing so rapidly. The exer-saucer is passé now.

Right Now

The temperature is 106.9F. Today I closed all the windows and curtains in the lower house levels, and left the skylight in the loft open with fans blowing upward to push heat out. It’s actually tolerable in here with the lights off.

Also, regular unleaded gas is now $4.79 per gallon.

A Day’s Work

Peas, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and corn (with green beans soon to be pureed). I did this because I can’t find the variety of veggies I’d like to offer Bean in brand name baby foods, and actually, I think this might be cheaper! It wasn’t as hard as I’d imagined it would be.

a day's work

98.5

That’s the temperature right now and it’s only 2:45. Little Miss is not napping well today. But she’s cheerful for the most part. She has begun pulling up in earnest this week and uses me often as a climbing wall. The other day she pulled up using the ottoman; there’s a blanket with fringe that covers it. She grabbed a piece of fringe and held on, letting go with the other hand, and stood there! She wobbled and wavered, but she was unsupported by me. She looks very, very proud and happy when she pulls up successfully.

I swear, I do stuff around here, but at the day’s end it seems like nothing. Steaming and pureeing five kinds of vegetables and freezing them in ice cube trays doesn’t add up to much. Doing laundry and vacuuming isn’t that visible. Slicing bits of cantaloupe small enough so Bean can eat them without choking takes time but doesn’t have a big impact. Then there’s the 15 diaper changes in a day, plus the four bottle feedings and the three leisurely meals in a high chair. Then I get up and do much of it over the next day. It’s a good thing I don’t have to justify my work in order to keep a paycheck.

Darn, I could use a nap even if my sweet baby doesn’t!

A Story — Or Two Dozen — Before Bed

This is how we spend 40 minutes or so before a nap. We sit on the floor with me right behind her. She pulls a book off the shelf, I read and set it aside, and she pulls another, and another, etc. until she yawns and rubs her eyes or bursts into tears for no obvious reason. Then we cuddle and rock and she drifts sweetly asleep.

a story -- or two dozen -- before bed

You can see a bigger picture (if you’re curious about the titles) here.

Losing and Gaining

In 2004, I posted briefly about the firing of Deborah Voigt from a role at the Royal Opera House. The reason? She was considered too fat for the role, particularly because she couldn’t fit into a little black dress that was part of the contemporary production.

She had gastric bypass surgery and has now returned to the role. She said she didn’t have the surgery in response to being fired.

“I did it because I wasn’t feeling well, because my knees were hurting, because I would cross the street and feel as though I wasn’t going to be able to catch my breath,” Voigt told “Good Morning America.” “Because, ‘Oh my lord, I might have to sit in that chair at dinner and there are arms on it. And will I fit into that chair?'”

I’m really glad she’s lost weight to improve her health and general well-being. I continue to think that it was a shame she was ever fired in the first place.

What do you think?

Oh Little One: Four Haiku

Oh Little One: Four Haiku

That brave little neck,
the stem of a sunflower;
your brain is blooming.
—–
Your luscious curved cheek
is a small apple that begs
for tender kisses.
—–
The tree sapling back
nourishes roots and branches;
may it grow mighty.
—–
Hands touch but don’t clutch
like curious mice seeking
their fortune in cheese.

–Kathryn Harper

she loves books

How I love her!

Aspirations

At the yarn store I started realizing the enormity of the project. I was going to need almost thirty balls of wool. That’s a lot of yarn. That’s so much yarn that when I told the yarn store lady what I needed, she let out a low whistle and gave me a look that told me that she thought that maybe when I’m not knitting oversized afghans I amused myself by trying to pick up marbles with chopsticks. It’s so much that she had to go into the basement to look for two cases of the yarn in question. As she stacked the yarn on the counter she seemed a little incredulous. This should have been my first warning: When a person who sells yarn for a living thinks that maybe you’re buying a lot of yarn — well, it’s a sign. A different sort of knitter would have taken that as a hint. Me? I thought she was a knitter without aspirations.

–Stephanie Pearl McPhee, Yarn Harlot: the Secret Life of a Knitter

I Don’t Know What To Do With What I Feel

Yesterday, in Stanislaus County, California

TURLOCK — A crazed man parked on a dark country road Saturday night, took a toddler from the car seat in his pickup and beat the boy to death until a Modesto police officer, dropped on the scene by helicopter, shot the man dead, authorities said.

Passers-by calling 911 at 10:13 p.m. described a horrific scene on West Bradbury Road near the intersection of South Blaker Road in rural Stanislaus County, 10 miles west of Turlock. At least one tried to stop the 27-year-old attacker, who swung and slammed the toddler into the asphalt and stomped on him behind his parked four-door Toyota pickup.

“In the shadows and light it looked like he had hit an animal,” said Dan Robinson, the chief of Crows Landing Volunteer Fire Department, who came upon the chaos on his way home from a late dinner in Turlock. “As we backed up again, I could see that he had blood on his arms. I could see that it was a small child.”

—Modesto Bee

The articles I’ve read state that witnesses attempted to stop the man but couldn’t. How can this be? How can adults fail to protect a baby? The man exclaimed the boy had demons in him. How is it that a bunch of adults failed to somehow grab the child away or pile on top of the attacker to subdue him? I know, I wasn’t there, I shouldn’t judge. I’m trying not to judge. I ask the questions out of shock and horror, because this news is difficult to apprehend.

Once police arrived on the scene, the attacker was shot to death. The child is guessed to be 12 to 24 months old, but DNA tests will be needed to identify him, because the boy was beaten beyond recognition.

I want to weep.