Today was the day
This morning V. came in as I was settling Noah in his highchair. He made some squawking sounds at that and angled for a nurse; I told him he could have one after breakfast. He ate pretty quickly and then had about a 3 second nurse.
Then he slid off my lap, walked over to V., and asked to go watch Signing Time (we’ve allowed that as a transitional activity… not my fav, but not so bad, plus then V. has been learning the signs).
That was it, until about 10:15 (today she was here 7:30 - 10:30), when he got a little fussy.
I think we have transition. Yay!
Grocery shop for a good time
Before I had a kid, and even when Noah was a wee babe, I would occasionally hear a mum (why it’s never a dad…) say that she liked grocery shopping because that was her time to relax. And I would have two reactions (in my head, of course): 1. that’s pathetic! (about the time) and 2. I’ll always take my kids grocery shopping because it’s a life skill. Plus if your kids cannot be taken grocery shopping you have horrendous behavioural issues.
So, of course, yesterday I went grocery shopping alone and it felt decadent. I stopped at the library first and I browsed without either having to rush to look over the children’s section shelves to be sure Noah was all right, or having to say every two minutes, “here, you can hold these books. No pull out big books!” etc
Then I got a complimentary decaff coffee at the Valu-Mart and pushed the cart up next to the shelves* and selected groceries in silence, paid, and went home. It was very - relaxing.
* If you have ever wondered why people with toddlers have their carts in the middle of the aisle blocking your way, I will tell you now: it’s because if the cart is not further than arm’s length out, disaster occurs. Trust me on this.
And that’s a good thing (babbly)
I got my editor to agree to push the deadline for the profile piece even further back. This means I can actually reflect and rewrite and things - v. v. unusual for the deadlines I’ve been working on, although I hope to make it less usual this quarter. And it makes me very very happy. I’ve already done a draft but I see that some of it’s a little weak and I don’t quite have the right flow to it yet - I haven’t found /my/ voice as a profiler, ha ha ha. I needed the time to get a bit of space on it and I got it.
It’s hard to ask for that at my work because, not to bash anyone there too much but - they are not in a phase where quality writing is on the priority list at all. So it feels a bit like asking for time to do something they don’t think needs to be done. But it seems to have worked in this case. I did point out that the profilee is going to be linking to the article and that’s one reason to make it good. New audience!
It’s amazing how happy this makes me. I was talking about this a bit with S. at lunch yesterday but it’s coming together in my mind that I really am someone who is motivated by trying to get things done well and not just done. I feel a bit like I’m making one of those circular (spiral?) leaps of understanding about the way I work here - I used to be (eons ago) the person who flipped out that People Were Not Doing It “Right” and who would both judge others for it /and/ get frozen up in an orgy of perfectionistic bullshit. Then I entered a phase of learning to Quit Being Perfectionistic And Just Finish Damnit and then I went around those two experiences for a while.
But the last few months my job has been all about the zen of just throwing copy off and emailing it (not quite as rough as the stuff I toss into this blog, but not nearly what I used to consider writing) and that was good for a while, but draining, because it meant reading things once published and seeing “oh shit, I should have done x, y, z.” Which always happens but it’s a matter of degree - these were things that really one more edit would have taken care of.
It’s especially draining when one has the feeling no one notices the quality or cares. And now I feel like I might be able to reclaim some middle ground.
Bubbly me. The horrible/wonderful thing is that I had this realization in October, and then promptly forgot about it and let the schedule (and not having childcare) control me. But now I am taking it back. The only things keeping me from writing really good pieces are 1. time (ahahaha!) but 2. myself/fear/work culture. So I note here yet again that yes, I am happiest when I am at least attempting to meet my own standards. And it’s okay, now and then, to ask for a bit of time to do that.
Sometimes it feels like having a baby is like a bomb going off. For me anyway - starting with losing Emily - I feel like I’ve got all these pieces of my life that I am trying to fit into a puzzle that’s no longer the same shape. And this week I sort of feel like I’ve gotten an edge piece on on the professional front. It is possible to be a mother, work from home for a small number of hours compared to number of articles to be produced, and still make the time for something good.
PSA for me!
This is mostly for me, but is public anyway.
Today is Noah’s 18 month birthday! 1.5 years! But that is not what this is about.
This is about how my metabolism officially turned around sometime in November. After a low of 10 lbs below my pre-Emily weight (but not as fit) I’m now up at my pre-Noah weight and not carrying it well!
And after a winter of struggling to balance stuff without really working out at all, and way too many cookies, and Noah learning to walk so that suddenly my walks outdoors are more like “standing around outdoors with occasional steps or dashes” the situation is becoming serious!
So today I had a lovely buffet lunch as a kind of farewell to the carefree breastfeeding lifestyle I should have given up - oh - 6 months ago!
And now I am on the straight and narrow. Weight is just weight and I gave myself until today to just kind of coast through, but now it’s time to start working on it. My goal is 20 lbs off by Xmas, which is eminently doable. More to the point I need to find the time to exercise. So this is my statement of intent.
SQT
Fear us!
Me:
Lyr:
Mags:
Work gush
So, I set this goal for myself of writing X pieces a year of which I can be proud. Not perfect pieces because that would be like locking handcuffs around my hands and I would never ever finish them (cf. My Novel) but pieces where I could say “I wanted to learn about this topic, and I wanted to write this kind of piece using this kind of research.” And then I could take them out of the pile of “things I have to write quickly and I just use the skills I have” and even if, say, they did suck at this or that I could say “well THIS was the experiment and THIS is what I learned.”
It’s sort of my way of mentoring myself, which is stupid ’cause the whole point of a mentor is that you have someone, you know, better guiding you, but I haven’t had a mentor around for a few years now and it shows.
Anyways so today I did the final, phone interview for my ladder piece for this month and although I have a ton of work to do on it (I think I might even see if I can be late with this one and blame it on interview woes) I already know I learned quite a bit. It’s a profile piece and I haven’t written too many of those, although I’ve read a lot voraciously, which helps. Getting people to talk about topics (like say, dog acupuncture, or TOFU AND YOGA hee) is a very related skill to getting them to talk about themselves. But it is not quite the same art, and so this is my first really serious run at “oh my god, how do I take what I can find out about this person and turn it into questions that will lead to something coherent and interesting and fresh.” About themselves. That will be worth reading.
As opposed to information that’s useful, which to me anyway is much easier, because it’s more straightforward.
Anyways, I’m not sure I’m going to make it to “a really great profile piece” here but I think I’m going to get quite a decent one and I think I found a few tricks. And that was not skill but sheer luck (okay and a bit of sneaky) ’cause I interviewed this media person and she was generous enough to be using her knowledge of what I would need to shape her answers. (And say what she wants to say, which is always the deal.)
So. Anyways, I’m just squeeing.
I feel old for this; this is the work that I should have been doing in my 20s instead of fucking my life up, then getting married and renovating and all that shit. I also should have gone to journalism school rather than run away from my parents to go to Mt. A. because it was far away (and damned if there wasn’t a good journalism school even a bit further, but that was too scary). Well and also because at that time there was this idea (TERESA) that she/I should be an elementary school teacher, a notion that thankfully my 20s working in an elementary school also disabused me of.
The point is, I’m happy today, this moment. And felt like sharing.
And now I have a shitload of work to do. Whee!
Nanny & work update
Things are going better and better with V. Noah is visibly more content with her each day, although he still melts down now and then. I continue to be impressed at her professionalism and caring (from what I hear through my office floor and door). And she still is smarter than I am, reading better books than I do. I feel really lucky and now I just wonder how I can keep her happy (and keep affording her!)
I also heard about a Montessori daycare in the area that takes kids at 18 months for half days. (Why is everyone else’s research better than mine??? But at least I have a network to hear about it.)
I’m considering seeing if they have spaces in the fall. Which is a huge ginormous step, I know.
My work is going better too, this week anyway - I have an excellent set of answers to email questions in my inbox for a profile, with a phone interview lined up for tomorrow, and I think that will end up being a high-quality piece. I was nervous about it because it’s of a former television producer who went on to be the start-up editor for a really high profile news site, so I was interviewing an former interviewer, and she was very gracious in complimenting my research and questions. So at the moment I am loving my job a little.
And although I’m not yet ahead to where I really have space to have all my creative cylinders firing rather than just slogging to deadline, I think I will get there (of course Emily’s week will torpedo that, but that’s okay).
I still need to find room to pursue new things/finish my book/etc., but I can see getting there. If we don’t have another child. If we do I will be doomed. That’s a tough one.
random thought
I remembered as I was rocking Noah tonight that I had wanted to record this somewhere and I pick here, so.
The playgroup on Fri was nice - smaller than anticipated, which made it more enjoyable. At one point the mobile kids were all congregating around the play food - mouthing it, sharing it, playing cooking - and it occured to me that we had in the room two white kids (Canadian, Dutch-Canadian), one African-American(-German-Canadian) kid, two Chinese(-Canadian) kids, and one Indian(-Canadian) kid, and that they were all (save the wee baby) doing exactly the same things.
And I thought how weird it is that racism not only started, but continues. I mean yes, I can understand some of it and have my own occasionally racist thoughts that I then am horrified by. But really I don’t see how anyone could observe all the babies and continue to think there is some essential difference under the skin. Eh, this is coming off smarmy but I remember the thought and the moment.
Phantom Scribbler said it all…
… about the NY Times article on praise. Go read it here! And imagine I wrote something that succinct and thoughtful.
Meanwhile I was going to post last night that I felt like my background funk had lifted, but today I am suffering Horrible Female Awfulness, down to cramps as though I were 16 years old, and my mood is nothing if not dark. Hopefully hormonally induced. So I will merely whine that the interaction between breastfeeding and one’s period just sucks ass. I didn’t have a period for 6 weeks, had a really odd light one, and two weeks later it’s just teh grossness. WTF?
Why I would suck as a new age guru
I should be cleaning or chopping melon for tomorrow’s festivities but The Secret has crossed my path again and I am so pissed, again. Sort of.
Look, I, like most human beings, want to believe and really pretty much do believe in a lot of intangible things. I have experienced love that is powerful in my life - powerful like a force of nature, sweeping away old things and leaving bare new shores. I don’t personally believe that can be explained solely as brain chemistry + tribal behaviour. I also have experienced times in my life where I felt incredibly nudged by intuition or drawn to new things that have really worked out (I think of those times as flow, like suddenly getting in a current that takes you somewhere fine).
And I have experienced the reverse. Betrayals that left scars that love still can’t touch. And dark times when everything I touched seemed to turn to disaster.
So it’s not that I don’t believe in the truth of something beyond the explainable, ordinary, physical world. And I think, sometimes, I can even believe in forces like a push to be more/better/caring and a force that is destructive/hateful/negatory. And sometimes I could even personify the first. I have a hard time believing in someone like a Satan; I don’t know why but it’s just not quite in me.
And I sort of believe in the power of prayer and meditation to connect to a sort of - amorphous body of knowledge, something just a little deeper than intuition. A pool of human goodness, sort of.
But.
Jesus fuck, the idea that if you wish hard enough/pray hard enough for something then it will come true just drives me batty. Around the bend insane angry.
Do these new age people really think that if mothers in Ethiopia loved their children enough that there would be food for them? Do they really think that people who die of cancer weren’t able to imagine themselves well? Do they really think that the universe is just waiting for you to visualize that beautiful (planet-choking) SUV in order to hand it to you?
Please.
Can you not see beyond the tips of your toes?
Yes, your powers of visualization made you a wealthy person! Well, on an everyday level, I can see how that works. Because it helps you get over hurdles other people sometimes get stopped at. But come on; do you really think that your imaging to become rich and powerful were just that much better than a father in Rwanda’s prayers that his son come home safe and not end up in an unmarked grave with other genocide victims?
This stuff makes me feel physically ill. I want to be very unenlightened towards the people who forward this shit to me.
What is it in ordinarily sensitive and intelligent people that makes them be such idiots every time some cutsey key to the universe bullshit goes around? It makes plenary indulgences (the practice of paying the Church so that you get a free pass on a sin) look positively brilliant in comparison. And I hate how people who have experienced true despair and unfairness - abuse victims for example; do you really think the abuse continued when you were a kid because you didn’t want to have an ordinary life hard enough!! - still buy into this crap.
I know it is fear that drives it. Here’s my new-age guru thing for you: the beauty of the universe is that we don’t control it; it is not ebbing and flowing according to the petty desires and dark despairs of each tiny human being.
People suffer. Some people go through horrendous things, not because they deserve not, not because they lack faith, but because they were in a particular place at a particular time. Perhaps the point is to be present for that.
I believe in the power of imagination to show a way to address reality. But I do not believe that it changes that reality.
“We are all something, but none of us are everything.” - Blaise Pascal