Grateful for: health, the gym
I just last week decided that I simply had to find a way to get to the gym. I kind of hate that whole sentence because it sounds like some horrid thing my brain contains where remarkably fit blonde women slough their kids off onto the “help” so that they can go to the gym.
But the fact is that I need to go do something. Either I needed to invest in some kind of indoor equipment (and my company reimburses only services, to a very small amount) or I was going to continue to lose ground fitness wise and I just don’t have much more ground to lose at this point. I’ve ballooned a bit since starting to commute and not run around Noah all day, and I was not exactly a poster child for fitness prior to that. Despite taking the stairs as much as possible, etc.
(I may consider a bike in better weather. I could maybe bike to the subway. Maybe.)
For me working out does a few things. One, if it’s weight bearing, it helps in the battle against osteoporosis. Since my mother scored in the worst percentile for bone density before menopause, and has broken bones in her foot simply by walking too hard, and has been the object of study, osteoporosis is not a joke in my family. Second, regular exercise keeps me off anti-depressants. Third, I am 36 years old and not a young parent, so I would like to stay clear of as many diseases as I can as I age, so I am aiming to lower my risk where I can and guess what? Diabetes, stroke, heart disease, even some cancers - all linked to weight and fitness. Hmmm.
(Does this keep me away from the cookies? Not a lot.)
So anyway, that all is my justification. The other thing is that I know a lot of people don’t like gyms or working out. But I like gyms and I like having worked out, at least. So it is kind of like adding a treat in. A treat that does not come from takeout, I might add.
Even so, it was kind of hard to do. Most of my workouts have been on the days I have worked from home (as today’s will be) because I can turn the commuting time into gym time. On Sunday though, I left Carl and Noah and went to the gym. That felt really shitty, as I was giving up two hours of time with Noah. What I need to do is to go after Noah’s in bed (the gym is 10 min away by car - irony there again to look at in the spring - and open ’til midnight, but most nights inertia really takes over).
BUT I was still so glad to do it. Although I am out of shape and ok, a little on the fat side - I am always on the fat side but on the fat side of my fat side - I felt my strength. I felt like I knew what to do and how to do it. Yes, I am starting over again in some ways, but I felt my body move as I wanted it to and I felt the motions coming back. I felt the grips of the machines (I am a wimp about free weights) in my hands. I felt the sweat drip down my back. And it was good.
I was never that athletic as a teen or even young woman (a little bit at camp and in the pool, but I did poorly in gym class and wasn’t on any teams, etc.) It was only in my late 20s that I even considered joining a gym (Teresa did, technically). It was one of those decisions that you make or don’t make every day. I’m no model for consistency or efficiency. But darned if that decision hasn’t brought me a whole pile of peace and enjoyment over the years. And is again, for however long I maintain it.
I am so glad for the health I have and the resources to try to maintain it.
I should start a ‘fun quotes’ category
Best quote I saw today on my voyages around the ‘net: “I also think that characters that started out in children’s literature are a bit different. Like Pooh, Curious George, Cat in the Hat, etc. The only Disney books I’ve seen are Finding Nemo and Aladdin.”
I will grant you that One Thousand and One Nights is probably not really “children’s literature,” at least in the sense of The Cat in the Hat. But… that one cracked me up.
Grateful for: work
Back to some gratitude (I’m going to have to extend that as I didn’t write one every day!)
I’m grateful for my job. I signed on permanently this month, with no probationary period, so I’m officially full-time now. There was a bit of a last minute flap over salary and I am not as wealthy as I had hoped (still not netting a whole lot after expenses, if you count daycare against my salary - but see, future earnings). Instead I have more vacation, though, so that’s a good.
This is what I like most about my job so far, besides the overall excitement that what we’re doing is looking like it might succeed: everyone wants to do a good job. When I ask for something like a file, I get it. When I ask someone for information, they find out for me. Although I have not gotten to do much editing or writing yet, my opinion is solicited and generally respected for what it is (that is, if I’m wrong, people say so, but not like they’re talking to an idiot.)
I feel like my experience and expertise is valued, by people who care. I had some of that at my old job, for sure, but not for a while. I am finding out that I know more than I thought I knew too, and that’s a heady trip. Until I find out I don’t know a thing about x and then I sniffle a lot (metaphorically). In a year or two I hope to get rid of the sniffling.
These pictures are from my current office, which will morph all too soon into a tiny wee little cubicle, but I have enjoyed it a lot in the meantime (as you may or may not be able to see, Lyr decorated it). It’s really helped with the transition back to full time to have a space where I could wriggle around without worrying that I was bothering people.
Generation gaps
A moment from my work day: I am getting my too-many-th cup of coffee. Beautiful 20-something comments, nicely, that she doesn’t drink coffee because caffeine is bad for you. (And she’s right!)
So I remember sneaking across the street from my high school to order a mocha at the newly-opened Second Cup there, feeling so devilishly grown up and urban. (But still needing the chocolate to cover the taste of the coffee.) I remember when I went from mocha to a “columbian,” with lots of cream and sugar. And I remember my calculus (also philosophy) teacher Demosthenes “happening” to drop in on me there and shoring up my dreadful understanding of trig by easing it between philosophical thoughts (I was a philosophy star and in danger of failing the calculus). I remember how adult I felt sitting having coffee and discussing Kant. I remember how the combination of the drug and the adultness would put me a few years ahead of myself and I would go home and survive the weekend.
I remember when my parents started making me cups of coffee. My dad still does when I go over there. When I was pregnant and breastfeeding all the time, he would make decaff, but it wasn’t quite the same.
I was in high school on the cusp of AIDS awareness: I started exploring my sexuality before condoms became a lifesaving device; when the big fear was getting pregnant. Although there were fat kids and anorexic kids (my school leaned towards the anorexic), food had not yet become the enemy, not even day-glo orange cheese. We wore seatbelts but we didn’t have airbags. And we were still a long, long way from no-fly lists.
And caffeine, while not good for children, was one of the pleasures of getting older. It was one of the ways you knew that soon you would be driving, and moving out, and getting married, and making coffee every morning in your own home.
I suppose I’m getting old now, and my nostalgia is increasingly misplaced. Certainly there “were no” gay kids at my school; gayness was something that happened in weird places like San Francisco, and oh, a million other strange omissions and commissions.
But I guess I’m a child of my era enough to think that in one’s early 20s one should be able to enjoy a cup of coffee with a coworker and not always be flipping through the health ramifications. How do kids come of age now?
Soucouyant and peep
Someday really I will put my database-savvy husband on uploading my too-many-megs d-x archives. Really. But meanwhile I will just have to tell you that in the summer of 2004, people may remember, I attended a seriously amazing week-long workshop at the Humber School for Writers.
And that I wanted to be in Francesca Lia Block’s group but in their wisdom the administrators sorted me into a group led by Alistair Macleod, and that the first night, sitting waiting for the GO train and reading everyone’s book excerpts, I cried, because I felt that I had been understood and properly sorted into my rightful literary house. Of course I still have not finished said novel.
But I finally tuned into the literary scene (as someone who is not actively writing literary stuff I have this love-hate relationship with it) to find that one of the members of that workship, David Chariandy, not only got his, Soucouyant, published, but has been short-listed for the Governor General’s awards, which are the definite highest Canadian honour. And he so deserves it and everyone should go get this book, if Arsenal Press can keep up. I’ve ordered mine myself and can’t wait to compare it to the dog eared pages I still have.
Even so I must peep: wtf have I been doing with myself? Oh right, having a baby, getting a job. Still, there has been an element of self-sabotage here. Maybe my competitive spirit will emerge about this one. And then I can joke with David that ha ha ha at least we didn’t end up nominated in the same year. Right? Right?
A girl can dream. Anyways, go buy his book, if you live in Canada. In the US you probably won’t have to wait that long. It really was stunning.
Grief, neo-natal loss, and why God doesn’t hate babies
Tertia over at So Close asked about posts on grieving, and I thought I would contribute. Everyone else: Cecily, Billie, Alida,Snickolett, and Vanessa have posted (will try to keep editing if more specific posts appear) has said a lot. (They are all beautiful, but Cecily’s and esp. Snickolett’s have resonated the most with me.)
For people new to my blog: I lost my daughter Emily 4 days after her birth, due to a cord accident and some incompetence. I do think neo-natal loss is different both from miscarriage and from adult grieving, especially in the area I’m going to address here.
I thought I would narrow it a bit and take the God aspect head on.
I cannot tell you how many people talked to Carl and I about God or Jesus wanting Emily with him/them; angel babies; angels in heaven; or now, guardian angels for Noah. The amount of (sorry) angel crap that crossed our threshold was astonishing. We also heard that “God never gives us more than we can handle,” “God has his reasons,” “everything happens for a reason,” and other variations on the theme of:
- God wanted your baby dead
- Satan wanted your baby dead, so you must be special to God
- at least your baby is now a super special being
Just to not pick entirely on the Christians, other comments were made about karma, which, by the way, is a misunderstanding of the concept – kismet handles the big stuff. But the summary of that is: you did something awful in this life or another, so now you’re all even with the universe.
What people really were saying, on the positive side was, of course, “I want you to feel better,” or, in some cases, “well I know I couldn’t handle it, so I will choose to believe God won’t do the same to me.” Most people fell in the former category and of course I still love them and one comment (or a dozen) has not ruined things forever or anything like that.
But let me tell you, unless you are one hundred percent sure that whatever your religious spin on the event is entirely shared by both parents (and even then), please do not make these comments to the bereaved. The reason is pretty simple.
It’s not consoling. I really don’t care if Emily is the next messiah or if she was handpicked by God to be the ruling Goddess of another dimension – the point is, she wasn’t and isn’t alive with me, which is where I, as her mother, kind of naturally want her. Even if I did I would still be pissed with God. In fact there have been many moments where “god” (my concept) has been dead to me over this.
And please do not use the occasion of a loss to reassert your religious beliefs, or to try to get the bereaved to buy in to them. Please. It’s really unfair. I don’t recall Jesus going around preaching to the bereaved, except in the odd case when he had brought the dead to life.
If you think about it, whenever you say something horrible happened for a reason, you are saying that the person deserved something horrible. Even if you have all kinds of faith that it somehow wasn’t horrible, that is still how the person listening is going to hear it. Because that person is experiencing a terrible loss. Honour the loss. Don’t try to gloss it over, whatever you secretly think.
And with neo-natal loss, I have to say that it kind of goes double. 99/100 people take home babies, statistically. It sucks to be 1/100. Don’t add to that feeling.
I know that a lot of this is awkwardness. Here, in this fortunate time and place, we are no longer used to babies dying. We haven’t grown up watching our mothers and fathers and aunts and uncles go through it or support each other. But really: just because a baby dies does not mean that suddenly you get to talk about what God wanted, when under normal circumstances you would not get all religious.
I fear I am primarily speaking to American and other Western fundamentalists (in various stripes) here. And I am trying not to pick on anyone. But seriously, people! All over the world, people die of starvation – mothers watch their children get sick of lack of good water – wars blow up sons and daughters every day. It is dangerous and horribly navel gazing, in my opinion, for those of us who were fortunate enough to be born in prosperity with access to medical care to start blathering on about how God cherry-picks tragedies.
The best book I know on this subject is “When bad things happen to good people,” by Rabbi Kushner, and in it he admits that as a rabbi he had said all sorts of similar things until he had a son who had a fatal condition. If you want the long version I highly recommend reading it; I also recommend it to anyone who is grieving who wants to get into the whole “where is God” question (I don’t go around recommending it, but if it comes up).
Anyways, that’s my rant. So what’s the best thing to say?
I’m so sorry. “I wish I knew what to say” is not bad either, as long as there’s no pressure on the grieving person to fix it.
It’s okay to feel lousy too, just don’t try to make yourself feel better by musing on the greater philosophical implications to the bereaved, okay?
Gratitude: Mac love
My promised post is still in the ether - ok, it’s actually on my personal laptop, which I was using for work, but now work has given me a lovely Macbook. For years Carl has been saying, each time it was time to upgrade, “Get a Mac” and each time I have said no, I’m a PC girl.
I. love. my. Macbook. Already. I’m still having adjustment issues but oh my god, it’s lovely. But now I do have this supposed line between “work” and “home” computers and that, actually, is becoming an adjustment ’cause I often futz with a work file while doing stuff at home, or check in here or at other personal sites at work. Which I think is not that uncommon, but going from working at home to freelance to staff, I am still feeling like my head is all spinning around boundaries that used to be clear to me.
Hopefully I won’t get fired while I work them out!
How do you manage your stuff? Do you blog from work? Work from home?
Critical parenting error
There comes a time in every parent’s life, I’m sure, when they look back at something they did and realize that it was not just a mistake, but a decision from which they will have to recover over time. Perhaps even involve professionals.
I should explain that Noah’s genetic heritage involves alcoholism on most sides of the family. Carl’s grandfather was renouned for his drunkeness, my paternal grandfather drank and even eventually did his own version of AA, and my maternal grandmother did not consider herself an alcoholic because she was always able to wait for her first daily gin and tonic until 10 am, when The Price is Right came on. Oh and one of my uncles was fired for drinking at work.
Then there are the myriad other addictions: my maternal grandfather spent every night and early morning talking on ham radio, the true precursor to the Internet blog discussion, and Carl has battled his own demons… mostly on World of Warcraft.
This weekend Carl and I forgot to take care with this heritage.
It started so innocently. Noah is so into songs and finger games and dancing that we, children of the 60s and 70s, thought that the logical extension would be to introduce musicals into our DVD library. And so Carl went out and tried to find The Sound of Music, but it being November and all, he could only find Mary Poppins.
And now our lives are slowly slipping into a living hell. The walls echo with the cry from the throat of this child to whom I gave birth:
Poppins! Poppins! Poppins!
No cherubic slip into sleep with a murmur of love any longer: oh no, last night the babe passed into slumber murmuring “supercali… doCIOUS! fragi!” I too dreamt of dancing penguins, and then a visionary foreshadowing: Noah, in drag, at Tallulah’s, belting out Julie Andrews’ tunes.
And of course when there’s an addict in the house, the whole family is affected. This morning in the elevator I found myself whistling… dare I say it? “Just a spoonful of sugar, helps the medicine go down!”
Where will it end?
I do have a gratitude thing to add…
But right now just a ramble. I’m working from home today which usually works pretty well but today I am was finding it hard to get settled down. That actually sort of summarizes the weekend too: hard to get settled down.
Noah continues to expand his capacity to share what he’s thinking and it’s awesome. Saturday apparently Carl took him through the car wash (we’d split up in order to shop more effectively, which meant I could actually try coats on at Value Village!) and Saturday night he replayed the whole thing. “Car stop! Red light. Green light, go. Car stop! Pssshhhh! Water on car! My scared! Swwwwwisshhhh bubbles!” etc.
He also sings, but not for my little voice recorder. I keep trying. He not only sings most of actual songs “baa baa back sheep have you … nee wool. Nessir nessir three … full…. naster… day… little boyooo… baa baa back sheep have you NEE WOOL. Nessir nessir full!!!!!” but also makes up his own, “Noah, noah, noah NO SLEEP, mummy mummy NEE wool.” (Not quite sure why I have to have the wool, but there you go.)
Grateful for: Emily
Today I bought my lunch (decadent and disorganized!) and the fast-lunch-counter-server-person asked me if I wanted to make a $2 donation to the Sick Kids Foundation.
This one charity will always have a hold over my wallet now, and I always say yes and I always sign the little tree-wasting doohickey they plaster all over the walls “Emily Hope.”
For someone who only lived 4 days, she made a lot of change in me. I am a much different parent than I would have been in many ways. I am much firmer about some things (this whole bus thing at Noah’s school, for example) and much more lax about others (sleep in a big boy bed? Sometime before he’s 7 or 8 would be nice). I don’t know if the sum is that I am a better parent, but I am a parent more focused on life and death issues. The times that Noah was up all night she had given me the gift of appreciation that he was just alive and breathing, and I think that truly was a precious thing.
She gave me the present in a way I’d never had it before. I sometimes worry about Noah’s future, but then I freak out a little and shake myself back to today, enjoy TODAY because you simply do not know. This too has its dark side but overall I think it has made me more present, more aware, and more thankful.
Still, I cannot help but stare at little girls about her age, especially if they have brown hair. I find it hard to walk past the rows of cute girls clothes to get to the boys. It is so clicheed but so true: I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t think of her in some way. It still hurts. But I wouldn’t not have had her for the world.