Journal Entries and Pictures from Evangeline’s First Year

A warning to those folks perhaps less than interested in posts about babies, birth stories and first-year parenting – my next three-four posts will focus on all of the above, as I celebrate/contemplate/freak out over the fact that Evangeline turns a year old in two weeks.  The regularly scheduled programming of recipes, book reviews and rants about things happening on the internets will resume mid-February.

I’ve tried over the course of Evangeline’s short life to write about her in my journal whenever I remember to – some weeks I am exceptional at this – other weeks, not so much. Here are just a few excerpts from that journal – I’ll begin with some of what I wrote during the pregnancy and then move to her birth and first year in the coming days.

6/2/2010 – Dear peanut, today we found out we will soon be lucky enough to have you.  So many steps to go through to get to you, but tonight we are in awe, and happy.

6/8/2010 – Time to break out of this lovely sort of fugue state I’ve been able to enjoy while in Chicago and start being proactive with this pregnancy. Back in Pittsburgh I know what awaits me – doctors appointments and deciding when to tell family and friends and work and creating a nursery…it’s going to be so much fun, but I am thankful for these first days of napping, eating, resting…

9/22/2010 – Dear Evangeline Grace – Today your dad and I learned you are Evangeline, and not Liam.  I will never forget the look on your dad’s face when he learned you are a girl – shock and delight, all at once.  The last few days you’ve started bouncing around my belly and I can feel your thud, thud, thud regularly – it’s absolutely delightful. I hope I always manage to treat you like a delight – that I relish the pleasure of your company and never make you feel belittled or insignificant. I hope I help you become courageous, and  confident. I hope I can help you, with all of that -

9/23 – Dear Evangeline – today your dad declared that he is falling in love with you. Together we mooned over your ultrasound pictures – yoru perfect nose! The slope of your forehead!

but it wasn’t always all about the baby…there are a lot of entries about writing angst, and work,

10/10/2010

I have got to find a way to make this job work for me – I need to find a way for a bit more time in quiet contemplation during the day so I can focus. I’m so distracted lately! I need to wrok on improving my concentration, remaining in the moment. When I grow frustrated with work I need to learn to take a st ep back and remind myself that I would like to be more like KG and concentrate always on doing the right thing.  Part of the problem is I feel like there are dual mes…the professional me who wants to kick ass in her job and the c reative me who feels like she is drowning, all of the time.

10/26/2010 – Pregnancy, week 26 – Sore pelvis, sore back, active baby girl!

I will stop here for now and resume with the rest of the pregnancy and birth story next shortly!

our house is a very very very fine house

Last year, right before Evangeline was born, I wrote a post in praise of the Pioneer Woman blog.  Nine months pregnant in the dead middle of winter, with the Steelers in the playoffs, I found myself drawn to many of her more fat-laden meals. Jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon? Sign me up. Roast beef squashed between two pieces of Texas toast, then smothered in provolone cheese? No complaints from this pregnant lady. I probably composed the post I wrote while licking fat off my fingers and patting my belly in full satisfaction.

At the time, it seemed as though whatever question I had, PW could answer. Sometimes it still seems that way – recently I had the best broccoli cheese soup I had ever tasted and I grew a little obsessed with finding the perfect recipe and sure enough, that very day, PW posted one. I haven’t made it yet but I’m still waiting for real winter to show up.

Sometime after I wrote the post and after Evangeline was born S. pointed out an article in the New Yorker profiling PW. It’s a fascinating piece that provided significant insight into how both PW and her husband manage her personal brand. I didn’t find it a particularly surprising article…that she and her husband must have money was obvious, given her style of living…that she makes significant income from her brand didn’t surprise me either. What did take me back – and this will show just how naive I am in the world of blogging – is the fact that the pioneer woman photo shops her photos. This seriously never occurred to me before…that any woman would use photo shop to punch up the pink in her daughter’s cheek, or make the orange of a sunset, well, more orange.

It didn’t bother me that PW and her husband are financially well-off – lots of people have money. It didn’t bother me that she’s probably a bit more business savvy than her blog would lead you to believe – I am probably a bit more business savvy than you would think. But photoshopping her pictures? And, if PW is photoshopping her pictures, are the other mom bloggers I read doing the same thing?

It turns out, yes. It also turns out that I have been living under the proverbial rock for not realizing that the lives these mothers share with us are polished and punched up and selectively chosen to create their own personal brand, whether they realize it or not.

I shouldn’t have a problem with this. More power to any momma who can find the time to photo shop her photos (confession 1 – I haven’t yet printed out a single picture of Evangeline’s first year, for framing or otherwise).  I also don’t tend to be overly critical of the mommy blogging boom that has erupted across the internet in the last decade – again, by any means necessary.  But for some reason the perfecting of photos really gets to me. I think it’s because I doubt how much value this really brings to the table…I mean, does nobody’s kid ever look like this:

(confession 2 – I have two outfits I wear all the time when I’m not at work…either leggings with a long shirt S. calls my “eighties shirt” or jeans with a white fishermen sweater – both are tucked into the  tall green rainboots that I wear all. the. time.)

I guess maybe this whole photoshopping thing makes sense…maybe it means that not everybody is busy perfectly appointing their parlors or whipping up batches of lemon merengue pie…instead they are putting a their ideal persona forward…who they would like to be verses who they really are. I can’t be the only one with a toy corner that looks like this:

Tilt your head to the left…you’ll get the idea. I can’t even get this picture to rotate properly.

I guess if I really had to pinpoint why this semi-fabrication bothers me, it’s probably because I’m envious of the lives put forth in these photographs, but it is an envy that is motivating rather than harmful. The truth is I want to create a beautiful home, a fashionable wardrobe and lovely meals but that kind of domesticity is something I’ve always struggled with.  In my reasonable moments I understand that S. and I have made great strides with our house, from upgrading all of the electric to new windows to a complete redo of Evangeline’s room, and yet I still feel frustrated that the living room isn’t cozy, the dining room isn’t glamorous. Say what you will about the importance of these things in the scheme of life but to me, having a comfortable and nice-looking home is important  – I just can never seem to find the time to prioritize it. In a way I find comfort in the house and mothering blogs I read when the authors seem to have it naturally all together, from finding the right skinney jeans and flats to featuring the latest thing to do with wild mushrooms.  I like the idea that some women out there manage to pull together fashion and house and home and motherhood and wifedom in one glamorous, easy-breezy package, without photoshop.

Yep, I’m naive.

I am embarking on what I am thinking of as a year-long adventure with my house. This is not a resolution but rather a promise I decided to make to myself late last fall. I think one of my downfalls is an unwillingness, at times, to put the work that is necessary for the results I seek. Oh, I don’t do this at work or as a mother or, I don’t think, as a wife – I work very very hard at all of those things. But in terms of having the kind of house I want? I get lazy, sometimes. So I’ve decided to really commit to working on the house and seeing what I am able to achieve, and not leave everything up to S. (something I can be very guilty of at times). I started slow this month – the only goal I set was to get an estimate on air duct cleaning and select a month to have a service come do it – done and done. I managed to push beyond that goal and even went shopping, purchasing a new comforter and sheets and blankets for our bed (those items hadn’t been replaced in at least five years, but I find it difficult to spend money on luxury for S. and me – I can’t say why this is) . The task, even the washing and making up of the bed, wasn’t as loathsome as I thought it would be amd the reward? Well, the reward was a toasty warm and pretty to look at bed in the middle of a house under rehabilitation. Spend money on your beds, people. It’s an incredibly quick win.

I’m looking forward to documenting the work I do on the house in this space, and I’ve decided to make this promise – whatever I am able to do in terms of creating a better home for my family, I will write about it here. And the photos won’t be photoshopped or altered or made to look like something they aren’t – they will just reflect the life we live in Pittsburgh, good bedding, bad flooring and all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2012: The year of love

Having spent the last three weeks recovering first from bronchitis and quickly thereafter from the wicked sinus/phlem/flu bug going around Pittsburgh, I think I can say with some certainty that the hardest part of adjusting to parenting for me is accepting the periods of simply not being well, thanks to occasional sleep deprivation and the daycare germs Evangeline brings home.  I realize of course that I could prevent a lot of this by staying home with Evangeline or hiring a nanny but unfortunately neither of these options are realistic for our family at this point in time and anyway, I’ve heard that if we don’t go through this period of illness now we’ll just have to face it when she’s in kindergarden.

It’s not just the not feeling well, either – it’s difficult to have our schedules thrown out of whack because of illness.  I don’t mind even the smallest bit using my time off to stay home with E when she is sick but I do mind losing time off to care for myself and that is something as an adult I have rarely had to encounter. Maybe I took a sick day here or there but nothing like what I had to do at the close of 2011 in order to get well.  Every parent I’ve talked to has said this is just how it is with young children and I think I’ve moved past my denial and am finally in the acceptance stage of what our pediatrician calls “the new normal.”

All of this is to say that I wanted to return here and reply in the comments section of my 2011 book wrap up, and I wanted to write a wrap up on the recipes I cooked and the albums I purchased this year, but I was figurately (although at times it felt like literally) glued to my couch or bed, when I wasn’t chasing E around the house, trying to keep her from eating the dog food. My apologies for a very lackluster blogging end to the year.

I did spend some of time I had thinking about resolutions for the new year.  Last year I was almost eight months pregnant with a broken foot and I decided it was probably best to forgo resolutions beyond giving birth to a healthy baby girl in 2011 – I am blessed to be able to say I did just that and for one year, it was enough.  This year, I conteplated concrete resolutions…remodel the living room? really start writing again? write letters to family members that live far away…and I contemplated lifestyle resolutions in areas I think I could improve…rely less (or not at all!) on processed foods (even that wild mushroom flatbread from trader joes)! Buy only American products! Recycle EVERYTHING no matter how much work it  takes God you totally SUCK when it comes recycling certain things…and I even, in a moment of sudefed-fueled despair, thought about choosing to make myself happy above all else for one year instead of worrying about the happiness of others and seeing how that trickled down.  In the end, though, I decided to do what I’ve seen others do in the blogosphere and choose a guiding word for the year and that word, for me, is love. I am going to try to continually check my motivation and my reasoning and make sure both are coming from a place of love. Even as our Christmas plans came to a grinding halt this year I could hear how off-center I’d become in the last several months…I was worrying about things like not getting a haircut and manicure for our holiday photo and failing to prepare the cranberry/lime vodka bottles for our neighbors and disappointing my family by failing to make it home for Christmas…all things that ultimately don’t matter in the length and breadth of one’s life.  What I received as a response to all that worry was a knock-down, drag-out illness that ultimately allowed me to spend an unprecedented amount of time with my daugher, in her room and in our living room, in our pajamas, playing and napping together.  Because S. had the same illness, he joined us during this time, and even as we lay collpased in bed after Christmas, neither of us willing or able to muster up the energy or appetite to eat dinner on Christmas day, I realized at the very least this holiday would be one I’d remember for the rest of my life.

I’m not fatalistic enough to believe I became sick because I was focusing on some of the less important aspects of life – I became sick because I was exposed to bacteria and viruses – but at the end of 2011 I do know the illness allowed me to hear my thoughts clearly for the first time in a long while, and I didn’t love what I heard.

And so I hereby declare 2012 the year of love, wherein I pay greater attention to my motivation and reason for doing what I do, and attempting to return to a place of love when making decisions large and small, whether I’m deciding what to make for dinner or how to respond when one of my parents or in-laws momentarily angers me.  I also hope this means more blogging for me, since it is something I love that I missed doing last year.

Happy New Year!

 

 

 

December Wrap Up – Books

Some of my favorite posts this time to read and write are the end-of-year wrap-up posts, detailing favorite books, movies, plays, recipes, clothing purchases…you get the idea. Normally I at the very least try to couch my book and movie experiences, if not the plays I saw and food I cooked,  in clever lists and funny categories , but this year? Well, this year, she happened:

And for a little while, all hell broke loose. If it wasn’t part of the Hunger Games trilogy I didn’t read it; if it was smothered on a bagel and followed by a mega-ton of icecream (ah, those early nursing days!) I didn’t eat it, and as for movies? Bwah ha ha ha. Someday when I have a day to myself I will spend it going to yoga and the movies.  Since a lot of my year was spent adapting to life with a baby, and then adapting to life with a baby while working, and then adapting to life with a baby while working while also returning to some semblence of fitness and a social life, I think I can say a little something about each of the books I read, movies I watched and albums I purchased in one post, instead of the usual three or four.  Here we go. Edited to add: as I am writing my book wrap-up it seems to be a bit longer than I intended – movies/albums/recipes will be a separate post!

Books:

Moonlight Mile, Dennis Lehane – For fans of his Patrick and Angie series, this was very obviously a concluding novel he had to write and we had to read in order to recognize that LeHane, like his characters, is moving on. I would feel more sad but Tana French novels are fulfilling the void this series leaves behind. It helps that LeHane is writing amazing work like The Given Day.  And I know if he does come back with another Patrick and Angie book, it will totally kick ass. Bittersweet book – worth the read if you need closure with these two characters.

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks – hazaah, I wrote a review of this one! Here you go! http://everythinginbetween.wordpress.com/?s=Year+of+Wonders

Swan Song, Robert McCammon (reread) – I reread this in my eighth month of pregnancy while convalescing from a broken toe – it is one of my favorite post-apocolypse novels ever – it might even beat Stephen King’s The Stand although I am not ready to back that claim completely yet. The relationship between two of the main characters – Josh and Swan – is character development at its very best and it is a relationship I often think about. Only the very best fiction can do that.

Four Corners of the Sky, Michael Malone – This books is a complete retelling of one of my most favorite novels, ever – authored by Malone – Handling Sin. In fact, a lot of the reviews are scathing in Malone’s plagiarism of, well, himself. While this didn’t stand up to Handling Sin’s greatness, in my opinion, I loved the retelling of a very similar story from a woman’s point of view. I’m also of the belief that there really are only two types of stories (A stranger comes to town, or character goes on an adventure) and I find so much honesty and compassion in Malone’s writing.

The Hunger Games Trilogy, Suzanne Collins – This trilogy helped me finally understand the fanaticism that surrounds Harry Potter and Twilight. Having neve read either series I admit to scoffing a bit at adults, not who have read the series, but who have taken it dressing-up-for-movie-premiere lengths or, worse, arguing Team Jacob or Team Edward with their teenage daughters.  But I loved this series and thought it exceptionally well-done, especially in terms of tackling complex issues with simple language, and I have decided that March 13, the day the movie premieres, will be my first day off work without Evangeline, and I will go to yoga and to see this movie during the day.

Squirrel Meets Chipmunk, David Sedaris – Pure brilliance, and this is coming from someone who thought he peeked at Me Talk Pretty One Day. It turns out for some of his work you simply do have to be a bit older – I also reread a couple of his essays recently and realized I appreciate them much more now than I did the first time around. Anyway, Sedaris manages to do an almost-disturbing job of capturing human nature in this book. I found myself continually turning the pages, reading it as though it were a novel which it most definitely is not. I had to force myself to really take time with it – highly recommend this work.

BossyPants, Tina Fey - Thoroughly enjoyable read although I would hesitate to call it a proper memoir…Fey’s narrative structure is pretty loosey goosey but let’s be real, here – who doesn’t LOVE Tina Fey? She writes the way I imagine she would speak and she tackles issues near to my heart, including men/women interaction in the work place, breastfeeding, where women find their sense of worth, etc. I particularly love her discussions on improv, and how improv is all about saying yes, and when she joined the working world it seemed to be all about saying no, and how that just didn’t jive with her way of being. Since reading her book I have worked very hard on saying yes whenever possible, whether for work, giving money to the homeless or accepting an invitation out.  

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson – I have mixed feelings on this book.  On the one hand I really enjoyed the suspense and the relationships Larsson created but on the other I don’t think it pulled me in enough to read the other two in the series…but I hate not finishing series out! I could use some guidance…in your opinion, is  this trilogy worth completing? I felt Dragon Tattoo just went on too long and if he had cut about 50 pages I would have been much more engaged.

In a Sunburned Country,  Bill Bryson - Billy Bryson’s work has always been a bit hit or miss for me…I’ve really enjoyed most of what I read but I ended up quite frustrated with A Walk in the Woods and another of his books, the one about small-town America with a title I can’t recall, seemed to lack empathy and even occasionally seemed mean, so much so I stopped reading it.  But I thoroughly enjoyed this book about Australia and found myself so inpsired by his story-telling that traveling to Australia is officially on my list of “must dos before I die,” whereas before reading this I didn’t have nearly as much interest. GREAT nonfiction work.

Savages,  Don Winslow – I actually reviewed this book. If you are interested, check here: http://everythinginbetween.wordpress.com/?s=Savages

State of Wonder, Ann Patchett – I found this re-telling of Heart of Darkness intriguing and beautifully crafted. I really fell into this book, and I found the commentary on big pharma particularly timely. This is my first Patchett novel but it certainly won’t be my last.

A last minute add…I just completed The Five by Robert McCammon – a fabulous combination tribute to road-warrior bands, music and the history of rock and roll as well as a little bit of horror.  I definitely recommend it if you have any sort of affinity for modern music!

 

Some Thoughts on Plays

When I read a play, my immediate instinct is to read it out loud.  It makes sense, I guess, since the entire reason to be, for plays, is to eventually be read aloud, but I imagine there are people in literature courses the world over who read “Romeo and Juliet” or “A Raisin in the Sun” and never think about verbally uttering the lines as they do.  No – I think the instict to read a play out loud from the moment the first page is turned is perhaps a bit more trained than it is natural.  Between the ages of eight and twenty-four, I probably spent more time in plays or at least affiliated with them (acting is my first love but I’ve been known to voluntarily run lights for a particularly company I loved, in other instances, I served as director) than not, and even though it’s been years since I acted, the moment I began reading Edward Albee’s disturbing “Finding the Sun”, which I read over a lunch break at my desk while eating a chicken pesto panini, I found myself muttering the lines, practicing with inflection, with tone.

It’s a delight to be reading plays once again. I forgot that I owned so many until I went to put The Hunger Games trilogy away in our book closet and I noticed, stacked in so many reckless piles, the wide variety of plays in so many different forms, from scripts to collections.  Plays in One Act: 43 modern Masterpieces caught my eye, since I am trying to write a one-act play. I grabbed it from the shelf, but not before running my fingers along the bindings of “Steel Magnolias,” “The Crucible,” “Angels In America.” Hello, old friends, I thought. I’ve really missed you.

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One of the things I love most about plays? The vagueness of many of the descriptions.  Playwrites are trying to help guide you with the idea or image they have in their head but it is not their job to spell it out for you exactly  – the reader or actor or director’ will filter the directions through his or her own lense and it is hoped that the spirit of the playwrite and the spirit of those that make the play come alive will meet somewhere along the line in agreement.  For example, look at this, from Albee’s directions:

Whatever beach outfits seem most appropriate to each of the characters and the actors playing them.  Towels, bags and the usual beach stuff as well.

The scenes of the play flow into one another without pause, althoug ha tiny “breath” between them – more a new upbeat than anything else – would be nice.

Or these, from “On Sundays” by Lynne Alvarez -

Downstage right is a large box with transparent sides.  it is open at the top – SYLVIA is in her bedroom; perhaps there is a pastel-colored makeup table and a mirror, a chiar, some fluttery, transparent curtains.

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I recently downloaded the musical “The Last Five Years” to my iphone.  My best friend M introduced me to it years ago and at the time I remember thinking there was something so unique and exciting about it – I listened to it over and over again, imaging my interpretation if i were to direct it (I could never fool myself into thinking I could sing).  With only two characters, one a writer and one an actress, it is full of inside references to book writing and acting which thrilled me, well, five years ago but I now find annoying…for a play to be about actors or writers I think it must be done extraordinarily well – otherwise it’s just so much inside baseball.  One thing listening to it again has made me realize is that I have an attraction to plays that really and truly rely on the actors to tell the story – not incredible set designs and over-the-top costumes and incredible music scores.  “The Last Five Years,” which is about the unraveling of a marriage that *mostly* blames the wife’s needyness and insecurities while making the husband seem like a long-suffering artistic genius,  really relies on the actors’ physical ability to tell the story of their marriage and so the songs are instilled with an energy and narrative that many plays lack. I remember taking myself to see a local production of this play several years ago and ultimately being disappointed because it didn’t measure up to the soundtrack – the actors didn’t seem to have the vocal or physical capacity to turn the play into the dynamic production it could have been, even with the flaws of the plot.

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Top Ten Plays I either read or watched that made a lasting impression:

“Angels in America,” Tony Kushner

“Blithe Spirit,” Noel Coward

“Miss Saigon,”

“Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” Tennessee Williams

“The Crucible,” Arthur Miller

“West Side Story,” Arthur Laurents, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim

“Three Days of Rain,” Richard Greenberg

“Steel Magnolias,” Robert Harling

“Private Lives,” Noel Coward (again) and

“Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” Tom Stoppard

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Top Ten Favorite Plays in which I had a role:

1. Oklahoma

2. The Crucible

3. Blithe Spirit

4. You Can’t Take it With You

5. Angels in America (I was an understudy and never got to perform but it was still amazing)

6. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead

7. A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream

8. Anne of Green Gables

9. Little Women

10.  Annie Get Your Gun

 

Bullet Post Friday!

(1.) Yesterday I started writing a post about Kim Kardashian’s divorce – it was mostly a rant and I made a lot of salient points ( I think) but then I logged onto facebook and one of my friends from home (actually, he was my first boyfriend – in the 6th grade – he dumped me when we were on a school camping trip to the Pictured Rocks for this awful girl  scout named Melissa – but we managed to move on from that when we started junior high and got all mature) had this status update: sending peace and love into the world today and I thought, damn, I was about to do the opposite and so I deleted the whole thing. So I won’t say anything about that whole debacle except, really????

(2.) I am at one of those writing points where I am so excited about multiple projects.  Just when I was thinking that maybe writing a play was the wrong choice because my glimmer of an idea wouldn’t form, it started to take shape! But at the same time I find myself excited for another potential writing project that would truly be more of a blogging/social media project, as well as for a book of short stories I would like to write.  Tonight I am going to force myself to focus on a plan of attack for these projects and get moving on them.

(3.) Evangeline is growing so quickly it absolutely takes my breath away.  Here is a picture of her eating black beans…everyone told me they would upset her stomach but she grabbed them off my plate anyway and, because she is tough like…well, somebody or something tough, her stomach didn’t get upset at all.  She’s nine months old, standing and taking steps and her favorite thing to do is play tug of war with a rope toy with Skylar:

(4.) Being a working mom is harder than I ever thought.  Possibly I would say the same thing about being a stay-at-home mom, too, but balancing work and family life is a constant struggle.  I have days where I think I am doing okay at it and then days where Evangeline is teething, S. and I both have meetings we need to get to but in order to get to them we each need the car and we rea lize we really need to buy a second car but God, who has the time to car shop? and then E flings her sweet potatoes on my blouse and my boss calls on my blackberry and I just want to cry. In fact, crying anymore seems to me my go-to emotion, as though I don’t have any reserves left for rationally handling days like this. I am not sure what the crying is all about but I will say this – even though I find working and raising a baby more difficult than I could have imagined, and even though I cry regularly and dramatically, I am oddly happy with all of it – I even on some level find a cathartic joy in the crying. Of course, it’s easy to say I am happy today – we just had a maid service come clean the house and everything is sparkly clean for the weekend.

(5.) I am in between books right now – I’ll be going to the library this weekend.  I just completed the Hunger Games trilogy and wow, I found it incredibly dark – it’s almost hard to believe the trilogy is designed for younger readers (althoug the language isn’t terribly complicated). I am in the mood for a thick family saga, I think – something as opposite from the Hunger Games as you can get. Suggestions welcome!

(6.) I am LOVING the two new fairy-tale inspired television shows “Once Upon a Time” and “Grimm.” I really dig the dark side of fairy tales…when I was little my parents gave me a huge book that had the original tales of Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, etc – in Cinderella the wicked stepsisters chopped off their toes to fit into the glass slipper, in the Little Mermaid she died in the end…I read these before I was exposed to the Disney versions and I relished them. I actually think the television shows capture the original spirit of fairy tales better than Disney ever could.

(7.) I am this close to buttoning all of my pre-baby winter slacks so I keep postponing purchasing new pants but winter is almost here and I am not sure at what point to give up, give in and go shopping.  I’m four pounds away from my pre-pregnancy weight and all of my clothes except my winter slacks fit, and those are so close…but I suppose it’s possible that even if I lose the last four pounds this month, my pants still might not fit precisely the way they did before, so I’m feeling a bit conflicted on what to do. I find it strange so many of my skirts, jeans, cords, etc. fit but winter slacks don’t!

That’s about it from my little corner of the world today – I hope everyone reading is happy and healthy and about to enjoy their weekend.

Revisiting A Previous Post

A mere two and a half years ago, I wrote this post about living and working as a woman in her early thirties.  Although it wasn’t a particularly well-developed post and the writing is rather sorry, for whatever reason it struck a chord with a number of readers and it remains generally in my top viewed posts from week to week.  I rarely think about that post but recently a new comment was added to a response Ms. Make Tea had offered and so I went back, reread the blog, laughed until my stomach cramped in some spots and groaned in recognition at others and thought it might be worth revisiting to see how two and a half years can change things. Or not.

A little bit out of context, but for a bit of referenct this is the response new poster Mer shared a few days ago:

Make Tea Not War (MTNW), you hit the nail on the head right here: ‘But I don’t think it’s actually bad to be a passionate, enthusiastic person with a zest for life. I don’t think there’s a single decision in my 20s and 30s I didn’t overthink and worry about but I don’t really remember all the hours I spent on that. It’s the experiences and fun and the moments of connection that have stayed with me. I think it all works out in the end…’

I love this post, so THANK YOU. It’s so thought provoking and accessible. I relate to the post and to the majority of comments. Right now I’m in my early thirties, and I am job searching, having finished my graduate degree, while also planning a wedding. And many of my friends are buying homes and having babies! If I look at my life path in that way, or compare, I feel behind and confused. What’s next? I’m still working on my ‘career success’ but also getting to the point where I’m getting married in a year and will want kids soon too. So how will this all work together?

That’s what brings me back to MTNW’s comment, is that along the way, we WILL look back on our attempts to make a garden, or a meal that came out great that we enjoyed with our husbands, or a time when we planned a weekend or day trip with friends. They are small moments, but when it boils down, and we can look back, that, along with a superior blog post where we got our thoughts out, are the pieces of our lives that we thread together that make us realize we really are living…It’s not so simple, but it’s what I try and remember when thinking about these big ticket items, so to speak, that I want in life and feeling overwhelmed.

Thanks for your candor everyone!

Mer, thank YOU for such a warm and lovely response.  You made me revisit and rethink this post and I certainly wouldn’t have done so otherwise.  So, since I am still (sort of) in my early thirties, let’s see what I thought then (32) versus what I think now (34).

At 32, I said women my age have a desire to cook beautiful meals. We have the proper kitchen equipment, the wherewithall to purchase whatever ingredients we may need, and a pile of cookbooks and cooking magazines which we have diligently thumbed through and put sticky notes on all the recipes we hope to make. And yet, with the rare exception, we eat cereal for dinner. Or eggs. Or beer. Or sometimes, we just have a couple glasses of wine. Because cooking the beautiful meals, which always require items like freshly made bouquet garnis or creme fraiche or duck livers, are simply too much work.

Hmm. Well, I have to say this still holds true, at least for the women I know and myself.  As much as ever I wish I had the time to make wonderful dinners but as often as not it’s something down and dirty like eggs and toast or a frozen something from Trader Joe’s. I’m ashamed to admit it but as often as not S. does the cooking and I’m really not sure why this is – it’s been this way for so long. I am trying to be more strategic as well as pitch in more with dinner – I’ve been using my crockpot regularly and trying to choose meals that can be made ahead of time.  Right now our goals with dinner are (a.) to make sure we eat it, every night, and (b.) that it’s most often not from a restaurant and  (c.) well-balanced in terms of veggies/starch and protein. This doesn’t mean I don’t long to be more elaborate – I certainly do. But elaborate dinners aren’t reality for me right now.

At 32, I also said we are too tired to cook because our jobs are, frankly, exhausting, and we take our work and our co-workers so much more personally than our partners do. We exhaust ourselves not only with the work itself but with the personal and political we have to pour into the work because all of us, at some point, have been in trouble at work, (my personal lecture came when I expressed an opinion at work and an older colleague called my boss and said I was too vocal for being so young, and I needed to wait five years before speaking in a meeting) – and we worry about all of this in a way we don’t believe men do. Or, if they do, they don’t tell us.

Hmm, well, I’m not exactly sure where I was going with this – I think I was trying to tackle a few different things…how I seem unable to take things that happen at work personally whereas S. is much more pragmatic, but also how I seem to work a lot? I actually don’t identify with this graph at all which I think is a good thing because it means I’ve grown some.  I certainly don’t censor myself at work anymore (well, I mean of course I do somewhat but mostly I say, in an educated manner, what I think) and while I still struggle on a daily and sometimes hourly basis with the work/life balance thing, I am mostly confident in my role and enjoy some of the perks all the years spent working finally bring.  I think we can all agree those of us lucky enough to have job are working more and harder than ever without a ton of financial incentive but I think that’s a sign of the times and bound to change eventually – we won’t always be bound to our blackberries, right? RIGHT???

At thirty-two, I complained that: We owe taxes instead of receiving refunds – a blessing in one way because we obviously earn enough to sustain ourselves but sometimes, it feels like a punishment because we didn’t make the choice to buy homes when we couldn’t afford them or have children when we weren’t ready. We can never afford the amount of taxes we owe (although I will say I’ve been exempt from this, this year, since we bought a house).

Well, I can’t believe at least one of you didn’t call bullshit on this back then – thank you for that, I guess! That said I do remember very clearly having several conversations with friends discussing the sticker shock that came along with our tax bills, but now I am used to it and while I am a little disgruntled when nobody – and I mean nobody – comes to clear my street after a snow storm despite the fact my taxes supposedly pay for the service – mostly I am happy  to pay taxes, especially given everything happening in the world today. Go ahead – keep on taxing me. You’ll get no complaints from me, except perhaps on snow days.

At thirty-two, I said : We want to have children, conceptually, but we can’t imagine how they fit into the lives we’ve created. We’ve all been told by people above us that having children will, in some way or other, harm our careers. And we’ve had enough friends who have given birth that we are no longer able to idealize the experience. Those conversations about episiotemies, breast feeding woes and sleepless nights? Girlfriends, let me share something with you – if you so desperately want us (ie, your childless friends) to join you in motherhood you should really keep those horror stories to yourself and confirm only our belief that motherhood will be exactly like it looks in J.Crew catalogues, all grass fields and matching sweater sets. Because, dude. Pregnancy-induced heartburn does.not.sound.good

Oh, geez. Good Lord. I don’t even know where to start with this one.  I do know that having a baby might be harming my career just a tiny bit, if I’m being honest – staying home with her when she is sick, leaving early for her doctors’ appointments, having actual time where I actually don’t check my blackberry – but I do know E has improved my life so immeasurably that these concerns barely factor in. I am trying to consider whether or not I am one of those women who shares the gory details of labor with her friends and I honestly can’t answer that – I think if people ask I am honest (as in, Oh my god it hurt so much Oh My God) but I don’t think I clobber people with the truth, either. I mean, ultimately, labor hurts. I was sore for a week. And then I was better. I was lucky in that I didn’t need a C section, it didn’t take that long to push (exercise while pregnant, ladies! Exercise!) and everything was very non-dramatic (except for the epidural not working – but on her birthday I plan to write her  birth story and will share all the details then).  I also don’t think I go around pushing people to have babies…it’s certainly not for everyone.  As for motherhood looking like it does in the J.Crew catalogue? Let’s just say today is the first day I haven’t walked around with peas or sweet potatoes glued to some part of me in four days.

You wouldn’t think much could really change in two years but revisiting this post makes me feel like I’ve grown at least a little bit! I think there is a large part of me that is always going to feel about 26 or 27 years of age…when I contemplate that I am actually 34 it sort of stops me in my tracks for a breath or two. I really should stop teaching E to “sword fight” with her spoons during dinner. One thing I’ve definitely learned to do is to lessen expectations on myself and what I accomplish in a day…life is short,  but it long and I am trying to fill it as meaningfully and beautifully as I can. Some days I fall signficantly short of that goal and I bitch about paying taxes and eat fruit loops for dinner…but most days are better than that, now.  Yes, most days are better than that.

 

I’ve decided to write a play

I have decided to write a play. A one-act play, in time to submit to the Pittsburgh New Works festival contest – deadline, early April. I have decided to write a play, a one-act play, in time to submit to the Pittsburgh New Works festival contest, deadline, early April and I am putting my commitment out here on my blog for personal and public accountability.

I’ve been a little lost in terms of my writing ever since I wrote the first draft of my novel, realized it was the very definition of first novel and probably not worth working on any longer and boxed it, along with all of the writing from my twenties, and moved it to the third floor of the house. The physicality of this act was extremely satisfying, enough so that I didn’t do anything digitally like store the writing on a jump drive and then pack the jump drive away…no, my digital files remain in the same limbo they always have, organized into folders that I don’t look at anymore.  It’s a pretty decent system.

I just haven’t known what to tackle next.  It’s not for lack of inspiration – I constantly play around with ideas – a mystery novel! An essay! That book on marriage I always talk about! Convincing myself to commit to a project, though, has been much more difficult…probably because I know how much work will be involved once I begin.

But this I know – I have to be writing something.  Even if I never make a career of writing (well, creative writing – I do write for a living – you know what I mean) , which I am actually more okay with than I ever thought I would be, I have an artistic streak that needs to be nurtured.  It’s the element of my character that has me considering things like pottery classes and taking up impressionist painting or maybe taking a hip hop jazz class – I care about my job and I love my family like crazy but I’ve always needed something else. 

Hmm, I feel this post quickly turning into thoughts on whether one can be an artist and work in a non-artistic environment, and if so how, and etcetera…let’s agree I will post on that subject within the month so I can move forward and discuss my decision to write a play…

I decided to write a play because it combines two of the things I am most passionate about – theater and writing – without forcing the kind of nighttime away-from-home commitment acting used to require.  What’s more, for a long time now I’ve been complaining to anyone who will listen that I’m sick of hearing, reading, and God forbid, seeing the same plays over and over and over again.  If I never see “A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream” , “Agamemnon”, “Steel Magnolias,” “Annie,” or “Nunsense” again I will be okay.

What’s even more appealing is the fact that there is an actual deadline I must adhere to, with an actual, tanglibe reward…none of this completing a novel and possibly submitting but also contemplating a host of other options like self-publishing or only publishing for e-readers or moving to a beta group first…instead, I write a play, bring in some actor friends to read through it, revise, read through, revise and submit. I also am really enjoying how already the process is bringing me back to my second love (the theater will always be my second love, I guess, because I started writing before I began acting, although I certainly approached acting with a lot more intensity and determination than I did writing, for a while) – I’m reading plays and thinking about seeing certain productions and remembering what it was like, once, to so totally immerse oneself in a world. 

Do you ever write a post and realize that really you are writing at least three posts in one, if not more? I first began veering off with my struggle trying to balance creativity with the rest of my life and suddenly I want to write about my history with acting and theater, which I don’t believe I’ve fully detailed here before. So, hazaah…two more blog ideas (not that what I need is more blogging ideas…what I need is more time to blog).

As for the play itself, I’m walking around with the glimmer of an idea, the same way I walk around with ideas for essays and novels and short stories.  Right now it’s shimmery – just out reach – but I’m letting it dance around out there while I do eminently enjoyable things like read Sam Shephard.  I have no idea how this is going to work out, but it’s the something I needed to round out my days, and how I spend them.

 

misfit Monday post

“Don’t forget to add coffee,” S. said Saturday morning as I was making out the grocery list. “And cream,” he added, wiping  up the remnants of Evangeline’s breakfast from her high chair.

“Okay. And I think I am going to buy some black tea for the week,” I said.  “I want to try drinking tea in the mornings this week  instead of coffee.”

S. glanced at me – the kind of glance a man who has been down similar roads in the past gives a wife – barely perceptible, but heavy with the sarcasm, all the same.

“Why? Why would you do that to yourself?’ He asked. “You love coffee.  There hasn’t been a morning in all of our marriage that you haven’t woken up and demanded coffee.  You are not the kind of person who gets out of bed and wants a nice cup of  tea.”

“I was reading this blog and the author said every morning she likes two cups of black tea with fresh mint to start her day,” I explained. “I thought I would try it – it sounds so refreshing.” Even as I said this, though, I was doubting my reasoning.  When the following morning rolled around, would I really be able to turn down coffee in favor of tea, no matter how sophisticated and healthful the tea sounded?

“Tea is an afternoon drink,” S. declared. “Save tea for the afternoon, if at all.”

And then I said something I rarely, if ever, say to my husband.   “You’re absolutely right.” I scratched tea off the list.

                                                                              *

I’ve got to stop doing things I don’t enjoy simply because I feel I should, or because someone I admire does them.  It’s something I’ve been thinking about more and more, and, in fact, on Friday of last week began by making my first declaration, to whatever co-workers happened to be around me at the time.

“I am no longer eating almonds as a snack,” I said.  “I am so sick and tired of eating a ‘sensible’ portion of almonds because they are low-carb and heart healthy.  They have got to be the worst, most anemic snack in the world and I am done with them.”

I often find myself doing/eating/drinking things I don’t really enjoy because I listen to too many talking heads on the news blather on about heart health and lowering cholesterol and fighting obesity and the Mediterranean Diet and how our kids are  going to die at younger ages than we will and, well, I can simply exhaust myself and those around me from all the things I think we should be doing, on any given day.

Here, for what it’s worth, are some things I’ve decided I’m never going to do again:

1. Eat almonds

2.  Think about drinking tea instead of coffee

3. Jog

4. Pretend to enjoy shopping at Babies R Us

5. Sign up for discount cards at stores I don’t frequent no matter how good a deal the cashier insists I could get (and yeah, babies r us, I’m talking to you)

6. Go to a professional football game

7. pretend I’m a foodie

To balance out the negative, though, here are seven things I hope to do …

1. vacation in Costa Rica

2. Learn to surf

3. Learn to dance  – like,  REALLY dance, like they did in the fifties and sixties

4. own a convertible car

5. See the Great Barrier Reef

6. own a real Chanel something or other

7. throw a really really really big but also grown up party (ie – an open bar, waiters circulating with food, a band…)

Just some misfit thoughts for this Monday afternoon…

 

 

 

 

Savages – Don Winslow

For the last couple of years or so, Don Winslow has been one of my favorite writers.  He writes about surfers, surfing, California and the border drug war between California and Mexico and ALL of these things I find endlessly fascinating (learning how to surf is on my so-called “bucket list” ) – I have a special fondness for books that take place in California, feature surfers and deal with the Baja drug cartel (hi, T. Jefferson Parker. hi, Kem Nunn), and Don Winslow does this genre as well or better than anyone I’ve read. 

I laughed out loud throughout The Dawn Patrol, and staunchly defended the novel when my father-in-law looked down his nose at it and told me I was reading trash (of course, this man also thinks Annie Proulx is trash, so what are you going to do?), I rooted for mobster Frankie in The Winter of Frankie Machine, I was blown away by the emotional complexity of The Power of the Dog. I was surprised, then, to finish the final pages of Savages, unsure of whether I loved or hated it.

SPOILER ALERT , SORT OF –

The ending of Savages? Well,  at first I felt so frustrated by it – so cheated  – that I momentarily thought I hated the book.  I had every intention of calling my dad up (who recommended Winslow to me a couple of years ago, and finished this book two weeks before I did) to holler about how unbelievably frustrating the conclusion of Savages is – but instead, I found myself thinking about it.  I found myself thinking about it, alot.

Savages centers around the lives of two men who grow pot for a living – Ben and Chon – and their friend, O.  Without giving too much of the novel away, the pot Ben and Chon grows is so spectacular it attracts the attention of a Mexican drug cartel, which wants to essentially take over Ben and Chon’s distribution.  When Ben and Chon turn the “offer” down,  the cartel kidnaps O – the rest of the novel is dedicated to Ben and Chon’s rescue quest. It’s pretty difficult to write too much more without giving basically the whole point of the book away, but suffice it to say there isn’t a traditional happy ending. And, as someone who loves a traditional happy ending, I found that pretty frustrating. Until I thought about it.

This is what I realized:  underneath all the snazzy language play (of which there is a lot - underneath all the sex (of which there is also a lot) – underneath all the California glamour – Winslow is making an argument. Perhaps he is making several arguments, but one in particular stood out to me  – that we are all (or, at least many of us, are)  complicit in the drug war happening right now in Mexico.  He makes this argument eloquently and effectively through the character Ben. Ben is like so many pot-loving people you may have come across in your life…maybe a little too into pot overall but generally a peace-loving dude who just wants to spread the wealth, so to speak – he sees absolutely no correlation between his particular kind of drug-dealing and the kind of drug-dealing coming from Mexico.  

 It is this thinking that gets him and his friends in in all sorts of trouble, and it really made me think…while I don’t smoke pot (I mean, have you met me? One puff and I’d be convinced the cops were at my door) I know and love lots of people who do – none are quite so into the whole pot thing as Ben is but I’ve met people like that, too and their pot smoking does seem to be completely separate from the drug violence happening in Mexico – but really, it’s not.  Pot should be legalized, they argue. Pot is less damaging than alcohol, they say.  Pot is all about the love, they declare – and it’s easy to agree with those arguments, or at least to admit that pot smokers don’t seem to do grievous harm and in places where it is at least medically legal, pot does a great deal of help.  But the fact of the matter is smoking pot is, for better or worse, illegal in the U.S. and by smoking it, however harmless an act it may seem,  you are arguably contributing the growing violence of the drug wars.

When I write it out like this, it doesn’t make quite as much sense as it does in my head- so I need people to go read this book so we can talk about it! Go, do it – before the movie comes out – Oliver Stone is directing and reuniting the cast of Pulp Fiction, seriously.  So, go read and come back and tell me if I’m off my rocker or not. Or, you know, wait for my next post, which will either be a review of Chicken Delicious (an actual recipe I actually made) or a recap of my rather disastrous single-momming it weekend. Or maybe both.