thirty threadbare mercies

The outward expression of an inward grace.

Investing in the Infinite January 30, 2012

Filed under: Art,Artists,Dance,Him Downstairs,Marriage,Music,Parenting,Personal,San Francisco,Writing — rheabette @ 2:13 pm
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Those of you following this blog will be relieved to hear that I got some respite this past Saturday, and I’m pretty sure it prevented a complete breakdown. Also, all sorts of weird, awesome, synchronistic things happened, I believe because I made space for them to come forward. I started off the day baking strawberry muffins for the Writers’ Group I formed, which had its first meeting that day. It was lovely — to be at my friend Christine’s house without my child, to be sitting with other writers reading our work and cheering one another on — now I know how the Fempire feels.

Afterwards my dear friend Amanda drove she and I out to Berkeley to participate in the first meeting of an arts-based process group that our friend and colleague Jason formed, with several of our other grad school alumni. On the way there, we discussed the perils and joys of collaborating with our romantic partners on artistic projects. I found myself saying, “I want to collaborate artistically with everyone I’m in love with. I want to write music with my husband, dance with Olive, write books with my sister (Molly, you don’t know this yet but it is a dream of mine!), and so on…” Then I got really excited thinking about what artistic shenanigans I’ll get into with my daughter once she’s older. Amanda also told me that this was the day of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of creativity, music, arts and knowledge. She was planning on attending a party for the goddess that night, celebrating her as only the Bay Area would. I found it incredibly fitting that this was the day that I was setting aside to go to arts groups, and it was a special day blessed for their cultivation. At the group, Amanda led us through an arts process in which I drew 4 reaching hands, and was imagining a goddess with many arms, overloaded with tasks, as that is how I am feeling these days. Later, I researched Saraswati, and, wouldn’t you know it? Homegirl’s got 4 arms!

Another thing that came to me in the arts process was the symbol of infinity as a solution to all my practical problems, which are myriad and seem totally insurmountable to me these days. The message that came to me was, “Invest in the infinite”, and then you’ll have the ability to do all the detailed shit that is clogging you up so much. I had SO much to do this weekend, but I took the time to leave it all behind and go to two arts groups. Wouldn’t you know it, I accomplished 3 errands this morning that have been hanging over my head? I think it’s working!

Also at the group, I had the other participants help me start working on the dance piece I’m doing this coming Saturday as a part of The Love of All Above, an incredible art exhibition and performance art experience by John Felix Arnold III (to us he’s just Big Sheiky but in the art world he’s a pretty big deal). Felix commissioned Joel and I (our band is called Him Downstairs) to write 5 original songs based on his post-apocalyptic art, and we have been practicing every night, fully enjoying entering Felix’s wild world of Unstoppable Tomorrow.  Anyway, we are starting the performances with a processional, and my friends at the group helped me come up with some movements to stride in with. I am so excited about this ritual/performance/dance piece. Joel and I can’t stop laughing, however, as we are finding that working together on music and art totally opens us up to each other, and we keep having to take breaks because making art is a powerful aphrodisiac!  Now I know why so many spouses become artistic partners, and vice versa.

The flier for our show this Saturday - check it. We're on at 6!

I am learning so many powerful lessons from this absurd, frustrating, totally flat-out broke period of my life. I’m not sure if I’m at the point where I’m completely grateful to have to go through it in order to obtain these gems, but I’m paying attention and retaining them along the way. Last night I had a dream that I had another baby, but it was a totally different experience than birthing Olive. This baby came right out in one push, while I was having a check-up from the midwife! No agonizing contractions, no hours of opening, just one push, and there she was, brown and beautiful, with long dark hair. I am taking it to mean that maybe this period of birthing my new self does not have to be so difficult. You hear that, God?! I’m paying attention! Maybe it could all just be a little easier? Please?

 

Cheer up, Charlie January 27, 2012

Filed under: Dance,Inspiration,Mothers,One year olds,Parenting,Personal,Work at Home Mom — rheabette @ 1:19 pm
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Yesterday morning I was bustling around, preparing for a meeting related to my Once and Future Career, and I realized that it just wasn’t going to work.  I couldn’t find the paperwork I had painstakingly printed out months before, and since I don’t own something as fancy as a printer, there was no way I was going to be ready for this meeting.  My husband tried to help, but I was not having that, since I had already moved over into Despair Mode, in which not having a print-out means you are never going to do anything with your life ever again.  We got into a sad argument about it, as I rescheduled my meeting for the following week, and he left on bad terms to go to work.  I cried a bit while getting Olive ready to go out, knowing we needed to hit the pavement or I would be a puddle on the floor in no time.  We followed my feet to… the door of my husband’s job.  Gratefully, he took a five minute break so we could sort out that he will agree to back off and let me be ambivalent and angsty if I need to be, as long as I agree to ask for help more.  After we got that worked out, I felt a little better but still like I was huge failure, in a general sense.  I took Olive to Toddler Time at the library, and when I got home I looked up my favorite “chin up” song, which is Cheer up, Charlie from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  Check it out the next time you’re blue — with that sucker on repeat a few times I felt all warm in my heart, especially because one of my husband’s inexplicable nicknames for me is Chuck/Charlie/Chuckles/Charles.

A friend came over for lunch, and I chatted with her about how difficult it is to be so adrift in this time in my life, to still not know what I’m doing, and to try every day to be okay with that and let life happen on its own, paying attention to the signs along the way.  We went and got ice cream, and since Olive dumped most of hers all over her torso, and then came home and stuck her hands in the toilet, I spent the early afternoon giving her a bath.  I rarely give Olive baths, as when she was little I had read some sad story about a child who died in a bathtub and I was unnaturally afraid of it.  It just sort of became her dad’s job, but now that Olive is bigger and  less likely to drown I am okay with doing it, and this particular day it took on a meditative function.  When you are a Work-At-Home-Mom, the idea of “accomplishing things” with your day is such a different concept than just checking items off of the To-Do list.  Raising a human is completely non-linear — you have to be flexible, throw out your agenda most of the time, and be as comfortable with chaos as you can.  I decided to forgo some big unpredictable park trip and just focus on bathing and grooming Olive for awhile.  She took a long bath, in which I lovingly and methodically brushed out her curls, taking care with the “kitchen” at the back of her head, where her fro had started to dread up.  After her bath I put balm on her scraps from her rough-and-tumble morning, combed her hair, clipped her nails and put her in a comfortable, easy outfit for the rest of the evening.  She babbled to me as I worked, feeling grateful and totally engrossed in the process of caring for her little body.  When I finished she looked so clean and wholesome that I took a couple of photos:

Olive says hello

happy girl

Looking for her next hilarious adventure.

Afterwards, she looked at me and said, “Tans?  Tans?” with a sweet, hopeful look in her eye.  She’d never done this before, but through trial and error I figured out that she wanted to dance with me!  I was overjoyed that my baby was asking me to dance, so I kicked up the jams and we had a dance party, laughing together as we cavorted around the living room.  We do this every day at some point, but this was the very first time she’d actually asked for it.  Her favorite is when I take both of her hands in mine and jump from side to side, every once in awhile picking her up slightly.  She turned her face up to mine with a smile of pure joy.  And in that moment I remembered that just the day before I had told another SAHM that even though she sometimes feels she’s not making a contribution to society (like she was before when she was in the “working world”), she is doing the most important job in the world by raising a quality human.  It was corny then but that didn’t make it any less true — in my 10 years of social service work, I have become convinced that 100% of the world’s problems could be solved by better parenting.  So, I needed to take my own advice.  I may be a little disorganized right now, but I am so, so blessed to have this time with Olive daily.  And she was telling me, with her whole body, how glad she is to have me as well.

 

 

The Golden Unicorns of Weaning January 25, 2012

Filed under: Breastfeeding,Loss,Mothers,One year olds,Parenting,Personal — rheabette @ 6:57 pm
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Yesterday evening seemed like any other Tuesday to me — I came home from a bangin’ dance class, changed into a nursing bra and nightgown and slippers, and prepared to nurse a very sleepy Olive, who had already been prepared for bed by her Dad.  But when I sat in the glider and put the Boppy pillow on my lap, Olive said, “All done, all done!” and arched away from my open arms, crying a little when we didn’t seem to get what she meant.  She pointed to her binky, and said, “More, more!” and then when her dad tried to hand her to me, she said, “No.  Joel!”, making it painstakingly clear that she not only did not want to nurse, she didn’t want her Mama to put her to bed at all.  She wanted her dad, (whom she calls Joel, among other things, which is very endearing) and that’s what she got.  I put my boobs away and slunk out of the room to ruminate on this new change.

We have been down to breastfeeding only once per day for the past several weeks, and the goal of course has always been to wean completely, but it came as a shock to me that I would not be choosing the time to stop, she would!  When I told a fellow Mama about it this morning at a playdate, she said, “Oh, child-led weaning is like the golden unicorn you hear exists but never actually encounter.”  This was a good reminder to me that the fact that Olive choose when to wean is a really good sign, that I gave her what she needed for as long as she needed it, and I do love that my daughter is great about asking for what she needs and knowing when she’s done.  I hope she never loses that ability to know what she wants and ask for it in an effective way.  It is just such a grown-up thing, and I am sad to be losing the last vestige of her babyhood.

Parenting a baby is so weird, because you are living through a time that they won’t even remember, but is totally life-changing for you.  My mom recently sent me a note outlining how sweet I was as a baby, and how wonderful it was to be with me when I was so small and affectionate.  It seems to me that a child really becomes a separate entity when they can hold their own memory.  You are always connected to your early parent as the person who held your story for you before you could make any sense of it yourself.  Just yesterday I was thinking about how much work it is to provide a secure attachment for your child, and then it is equally challenging to be a springboard and allow your kid to grow.  We love, and let go.  Love, and let go.

Thank God she's still cuddly and gives me these sweet kisses...

Today I tried a new morning yoga class, and though the teacher still asked us to speak in a foreign language that none of us knew, she also played great music (Radiohead, Animal Collective, Bjork — all of 2009′s favorites!  I love it when the soundtrack is just slightly retro, it’s comforting.)  and was very down-to-earth.  She didn’t insist that I have a fanfuckingtastic day.  She let me be me, and I enjoyed myself, feeling no rage at all in the class.  Instead, I was able to be present with the myriad of other emotions that were coming up for me as I honored the passing of the particular connection moms and babies have from breastfeeding.  At one point in the class, we let out a few big collective exhales, and the teacher encouraged us to let go of whatever we didn’t need that was within us, giving the examples of spiders or garbage.  I imagined a gush of milk, flowing out of me, sweet and nourishing but no longer needed to be stored in my body.  I felt lighter as I came up from the pose, spent of the last vestiges of mother’s milk, but also really in touch with how bittersweet this change is for me.

Up until last night, “na na”, as Olive calls it, has been her absolute favorite time of day.  She is 16 months now, and she doesn’t “need” it anymore, but I was waiting for her cue about when to stop officially.  When it happened, though, I couldn’t help but feel sad and rejected.  I guess this is a strange truth of parenting — when things happen that you know are right and are glad they are occuring — when they are literally what you’ve wished for your child, you still feel sad because it means the end of that stage.  Sometimes when I get all sad about losing Olive’s babyhood, I imagine her as a young adult, lanky and brown, running on the beach or playing a musical instrument onstage or dancing in a troupe or skating at the park and I think, “she needs to grow up, so that she can do all those things.”  She has to detach from me so that she can attach to other people, make friends and one day fall in love, explore the world and take chances with her one wild and precious life, to quote Mary Oliver.

Joel came out to see how I was doing, before rushing off to meet a friend and leave me to reach out to my family member Mamas who always know just what to say (Thanks, Molly & Fab!).  He said, “You can always go pick her up in her crib and hold her, if you need to.”  But I knew I needed to let her sleep.  She needed her rest — she had so much more exploring of the world to do in the morning.

 

What’s a Weekend? January 23, 2012

Filed under: Mothers,One year olds,Parenting,Personal,Pop Culture,Toddlers,TV,Work at Home Mom,Yoga — rheabette @ 2:47 pm
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There were several mini-meltdowns this weekend at the St. Julien house, but they weren’t from the 16 month old in residence, rather the 30 year old, crying into her oatmeal in the mornings.  For some reason, my weekend days went like this: utter panic and anxiety in the early mornings, doing something surprisingly enjoyable in the late morning, active, agreeable afternoons and delightful evenings.  So why the hell was I freaking out each morning?  I want each day to stretch out in front of me like an inviting ocean — possibly full of sharks but more likely a few waves and unfathomable depths to explore.  Instead, I felt like the days were just lists, impossible in their length, no end to the amount of difficult things I had to accomplish, all while attuning to my mercurial toddler’s every need.  I am obviously still adjusting to being with Olive every second of life, and had somehow built up in my mind that weekends would be this huge respite time.  But once I realized they weren’t going to be all that different from the Monday to Friday schedule, I got really overwhelmed and frustrated.  Expectations are everything.  When you think you are going to get a break and you don’t, it’s really disappointing.  If you are living more in the moment, taking each minute for what it is, either difficult, joyful, or just there, you can appreciate the rhythm of a day, rather than either expecting it to be really challenging and getting all worked up in anticipation, or expecting it to be a day of rest and feeling furious when it doesn’t turn out that way.

I think I just need to be more like the Dowager Countess of Grantham.  She asks, in Season One of Downton Abbey, “What’s a week-end?”  As a royal, she doesn’t have a “work week”, so every day is quite the same to her.  TGIF would also be an unuseful phrase to her.  Probably the most relaxing time I had this weekend was curling up on the couch myself, a glass of cough-worthy champagne and a sundae glass of salted caramel ice cream beside me, tucking in to Season Two of Downton Abbey.  I have the habit of getting my husband hooked on the shows I love (most recently, Shameless, thanks to Mindy Kaling, my new BFF), which is really fun but it also means I have to wait for him to watch them, lest I end up like Will Arnett on Up All Night who totally got called out for watching the show he and his wife were into with another Stay-At-Home-Parent.  Anyway, Downton is one show Joel finds incredibly boring, which is cool with me because then I have something to do on the nights he goes out (they are rare but they do happen!).  Anyway, I am not a person who dislikes solitude, and without it I would not have found this delightful show — here is a clip the Dowager Countess experiencing a swivel chair for the very first time, for your viewing pleasure:

Was that a nice palatte cleanser?  You’re welcome.  Back to my musings.  I am simply adjusting to this time in my life, and in the process I really need to get even more present.  That is why I go to yoga, to practice being in the present moment, but yoga really just makes me mad a lot of the time.  I spend time wondering, does yoga just get me in touch with rage that is already there, or does it just really piss me off?  Maybe it’s the teacher — I’m going to try to find one that doesn’t make me want to rip her head off while holding yet another crescent lunge.  I need more crescent rolls, less crescent lunges.  Today she said, “This should be the best Monday of your life, and if not, you’re doing something wrong.”  I just thought “F that.  This Monday might suck donkey dicks, I’ma let it happen how it happens and just show up.”  Then I promptly forgot that by getting all invested in whether or not Olive enjoyed the morning activity I took her to.

I spend a lot of time taking Olive to activities specially formulated for kids, which takes a lot of time and effort on public transit, and I therefore want her to have a “best Monday of her life” kind of experience.  Just like my irksome yoga teacher, I wanted to force awesomeness on her.  This morning, I was really irritated that instead of listening to the story, singing the songs, or even being in the same room as the Toddler Tales going on for the kids at the library, she  just wanted to do something weird like climb up and down from a particular chair at the computer station.  Then I got home and read on my weekly updates from Baby Center, “It is not your job to make life fun or free of frustration for your child.”  And… exhale.  I mean of course I cognitively know that but that is a message I need to staple to my forehead.  Trying to make sure Olive has fun and enjoys life is a) totally futile and b) completely controlling and ridiculous.  All I can do is offer her experiences that she might enjoy, and then let go of what happens.  Maybe her little brain needed that computer chair way more than the adorable story about a lost puppy.  Who am I to judge?

 

The 5 Stages of Blogging January 18, 2012

Filed under: Art,Blogging,Community,Inspiration,Personal,Writing — rheabette @ 2:41 pm
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Blogging is such a weird word, nevermind a strange new form of communication, in which you have the gall to suggest that others want to hear your innermost thoughts.  Is it an act of extreme hubris, or just one of hope?  Well, there are stages involved, and in some of them, the blogger (in this case, yours truly) is at her most self-absorbed, and in others, she’s just doing what she’s meant to do — write, communicate, create community.  I usually get stuck at #5 for an interminable amount of time — I’m subverting that this week by writing so soon after my last post!  So, here are the 5 Stages of Blogging, according to me, not be confused with the Stages of Death, which are totally annoying, but that is a whole other post (ooh, an idea for when I get to stage 5 again, i.e. later today).

1. Writing a Post
You’re feeling good, in the groove, you’ve committed to your topic and you’re working it out, word by word. Researching as you go, adding photos where needed, trying to tell the inner critic to take a bath, enjoying the ride. This is the most blissful stage in the process.  For me it usually occurs when Olive is down for that rare long afternoon nap, and I’ve got a cup of tea beside me on my extremely messy kitchen table as I try to shut everything else out and just write, which is hard to do with the internet at your fingertips.  I LOVE writing in longhand (or on a typewriter, like the mop-top below is doing or pretending to do for a cute photo) so if I had a scanner I would just scan in handwritten sheets.  That would be awesome!  Anyone have an extra scanner laying around they want to let me use??

This is not me. I can't afford glasses that nice.

2. Posting
Sort of scary, actually putting what you’ve written out there for IMMEDIATE consumption and judgment is a bold act. I always hover over the “publish” key for an extra second. Then it’s time to post the link on social media sites, so your readers can check out what you’ve done.  Twitter and Google + are like farting into the wind, no one ever clicks from there.  But if you are reading this right now, there’s a 90% chance you clicked a link on Facebook, so thank the mighty Internet gods for that mecca, where with enough constant filtering you can learn some really great stuff in a short period of time, or waste endless amounts of your life looking at other people’s vacations and kids, your choice.


3. Post-Posting Obsessiveness/Vulnerability
Compulsive checking of “site stats” and comments commences. Is there anybody out there? This is the stage of wondering if people actually read your words, and if they do, who the hell are they? Very few people who read take the added step of joining the conversation via a comment, so you are left in the dark about who is listening to your latest tirade. But perhaps you get a comment or two, and in the best case scenario, their comment leads to a further discussion, either on or offline.  At least, that is why I do it.  I am really seeking to start conversations, rather than just have my own voice heard.  My favorite blogs are sites where the writers have dedicated followers who comment and actually start to shape the content of what the blogger writes about.  I know that since I have started blogging, it has deepened some of my friendships offline, as I have already laid out ground for people to connect with me on.  I have also met or reconnected with some incredible people that I only knew in passing otherwise.  I often think of these readers when I’m writing, imagining their response to my current thoughts.  For the most part this has been incredibly positive, but you can’t control who reads something you post on the web, so I have definitely had the feeling that perhaps I have overshared.  Did I really just tell the whole world about my post-nursing boobs?  Sometimes it leads to very odd information, such as what people searched to get to your site.  Since I do write about my tits a lot, I’ll get a lot of clicks from people looking for boobs to ogle, which usually makes me uncomfortable but it really cracked me up yesterday to read that someone got my blog by typing in “boobs cannot die” in their search engine.  First of all, what does that even mean, and why would it lead said person to my blog?  I hate to break it to him, but Dude, boobs die.  Boobs definitely die.  In general, I’ve decided to be as upfront as possible, because authenticity is a dying art in this culture, and I believe in it.  More vulnerability equals more connection, as long as the people I care about speak up if something I’ve said offends or hurts.  Molly Wizenberg in her excellent book A Homemade Life says:

“I guess you could say that having a blog is a little like the windows of a house I used to live in during my sophomore year of college. I loved opening them wide during the day, so that the smell of the eucalyptus trees outside could drift in and sweep out the rooms. But occasionally I would come home and find a squirrel on my desk. A live squirrel. He would have climbed up the tree outside and jumped in through the window, and now here he was, rifling with his tiny, scratchy claws through whatever he found, tearing up every paper and scrap. Blogging is a little like that. . . . [O]ccasionally you come home and find a squirrel on your desk, so to speak: a nasty comment, maybe, or even worse, something you wrote yourself, probably late at night, when you should have been sleeping, something that makes your cheeks hot.”

I have caught a few squirrels, but I always set them free.

I do admit that I always ask my husband for his response. Isn't that in the marriage vows: Thou Shalt Read Each Other's Blogs?

4. Riding the High
A post that has been received and read by more than just the people you live with, and has led to some sort of conversation leads to a satisfying feeling of success. “I am actually a writer, however insular and self-published it may be!” you think to yourself, and you feel good for about a day.  Before I started this endeavor of blogging, I thought blogs were sort of stupid.  I imagined the writing was not very good, unfocused, self-reverential and pithy.  But then I read a few really excellent blogs, and I started to see it as a chance to let go of perfection and just write.  Give up on the idea of writing The Next Great American Novel and start with writing about what’s right in front of you.  Here’s a weird thing: writing begets writing.  My awesome writer friend Christine turned me on to this site, 750words.com, where you can do your “morning pages” online each day — they send you reminders, track your word count, and let you know when you’ve completed the equivalent of 3 pages.  Then they do this weird thing where they turn whatever you’ve written into charts — a bar graph of how your writing progressed and a pie chart of what it was about.  My favorite was the day they told me I was feeling affectionate about death.  Anyway, doing this each day helps me build the muscle of writing, without worrying about the content or the reception.  It’s writing for the fun of it, and indeed it feels good.  In fact, since I started blogging I have been encouraging other people to start their own, as well, because everyone I know who has started a blog has something interesting to say.  Maybe I just know really interesting people, or maybe blogging has developed enough as a form of writing that people are just better at it, putting out more thought-provoking material rather than the drivel that pervaded its early years.  Granted, there are bad ones out there.  I recently unsubscribed to a mommy blog because her posts were less and less about parenting and more and more about how she came off to her readers.  I drew the line at the post asking everyone to “get skinny” with her on her new diet plan.  If YOU have read this far, then I probably would like you a lot and maybe you should start a blog and become my new favorite.  I have a space that just opened up on my google reader, afterall!

High on writing. Or: You dreaming up your next blog. Sidenote: why do all the searches for writing photos bring up pics of cute girl + glasses + typewriter?

5. Crashing the Wave/Brainstorming
The high of Stage 4 is wildly short. Soon enough, the worry that you haven’t posted in awhile sets in. Ideas for a new post come and go, with you either dismissing them or letting them simmer to see if there is more there that needs to develop before putting them down in black and white. Sometimes you get a great idea but have no time to actually write about it, and this is an uncomfortable fullness that needs expression as soon as possible. If more than a week goes by, you wonder, “Have I lost all my interested readers? Am I really still a writer if I’m not producing regularly? WILL I EVER WRITE AGAIN GAHHHHHHHH!” It can get pretty bleak. However, soon enough you find the time, courage, and brain power to get back to Step One.  Unless you die first, and your last post you ever wrote was about something dumb like how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, and that is how everyone will remember you. Please God, don’t let me die tonight.  I don’t want to be remembered as the “boobs cannot die” girl whose boobs died along with the rest of her after posting about it.  Ahhhh, you see what Stage 5 does to me?  Even writing about it makes me insane!

So, how about you, fellow bloggers/writers/creators of any kind?  Do your stages match up with mine?  Any important ones I left out, like the stage where you put on a fox costume and skulk around the house on all fours?  Oh, nobody else does that one?  Yeah, that’s why I omitted it — it’s not exactly universal.

 

Leaving No Trace of Yourself January 17, 2012

Filed under: Body Image,Dance,Mothers,One year olds,Parenting,Personal,Work at Home Mom,Yoga — rheabette @ 3:22 pm

“When you do something, you should to it with your whole body and mind.  You should do it completely, like a good bonfire.  You should burn yourself completely, leaving no trace of yourself.”  Or so says Shunryu Suzuki in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.  Should you really do this?  No, I actually think this is terrible advice.  But do I follow it, in nearly everything I set out to do, once I create it as a challenge for myself?  You bet your ass I do.  I can’t KEEP from burning, even when the smoke has totally engulfed me and I’m blind and gasping for air.  But I always emerge transformed by the flames.  Whether it’s eating a plate of brownies or walking up one of SF big-ass hills, I go into it with gusto.  I’ve always been this way, and so it’s no surprise that this has been my take, the past week and a half that I have been raising Olive as a full-time job.

As you can imagine, a person throwing themselves into anything has its share of drama.  We all love a good comeback story, rife with montages of getting into shape for the big fight or prepping for the master heist.  However, isn’t it always a little more interesting and hilarious when the person just takes a digger and face-plants all the way down the mountain they’ve just climbed?  I think so.  Anyway, those montages rarely have toddlers in them.  If they did, there would be a lot of boring meandering into stores that your kid has led you into because she saw something colorful, and the blueprints of the bank/casino/mansion would be covered in regurgitated lunch and soaked through with milk and pee.  That’s right, pee, because the other day, when I was watching glamorous stars walk the red carpet at the Golden Globes, Olive somehow managed to pee out the side of her diaper, through her clothes, onto my dress.  She’s bound for the circus, with stunts like that.

Anyway, I’ve developed a couple of little plans for this new endeavor of Work-At-Home-Mom status, and they are going off without a hitch.  Right?  Oh, they’re not?  Okay, well, at least no one has broken any more bones.  Knock knock.

1. Exercise A Shit-ton of Times a Week… AKA five.  Which is a lot to me.  I went from working out zero times for 2 weeks when I was in New England, unless you counted the great effort of bringing the fork to my mouth with all those complex carbohydrates on it, to working out 5 days a row, doing a combo of early morning yoga, dance classes, and long walks carrying a 22 lb Olivey weight.  Am I exercising to be a super skinny Heidi Klum mom?  No effing way (trying to cut down on my cursing is another thing I’m trying out, since Olive repeats EVERYthing I say now, and woke up from a nap this weekend saying, “shit”).  Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of beautiful thin gals, but it is not my preferred body type for myself.  (or objects of my harmless girl-crushes — have you seen the model in this article?  Why don’t we see more pictures like this, of happy, beautiful, normal-sized ladies?)  I just look better a little thick, so I’m pumping up the pastry consumption as well as the anxiety-reducing, joy-producing workouts.  It’s going pretty well, and it is giving me a reason, every single day, to be without Olive for at least one hour, doing something that feels good in my body for me alone.  I highly recommend other SAHMs or unemployed people to try this one.

2. Plan An Outing For Every Day.  Even if it’s just “park time”, I’m keeping a calendar like I’m a high-powered exec.  I’ve got playdates with people I barely know, so long as Olive and I have something to look forward to each day.  In trying to fill said calendar, I signed Olive and I up for Rec Center class entitled “Simply Fun Tot Gym”, which consists of a basketball court strewn with a whole bunch of toddler-appropriate toys, and an incredibly loud boombox (yup, those things still exist) bumping “The Farmer in the Dell” and such jams.  I had thought she would enjoy such an age appropriate hour, but my little gal tore through that place in five minutes, playing with each toy at lightning speed, and then declared herself “All Done!”, complete with hand motions, and hightailed it to the door.  I dragged her back, thinking “No!  I had thought this would eat up so much more time!  She can’t have gotten everything out of that mini hula hoop!”, but Olive would not be thwarted.  She decided the only thing she had left to do was find a sweet looking tot and poke her in the eyes.  Once I dragged her off little Sarah, Olive walked around through the nerf balls and slides crying aimlessly, like she was a soldier on the battlefield, searching for a blown-off appendage.  I distracted her for another few minutes by singing and dancing along to the unbearably loud and upbeat music, but then all the children crowded around me and it got a little too “Pied Piper”.  In the end, we lasted 30 minutes, missing the promised story and circle time at the end.  Was it worth it?  Hell no.  Will be back?  Of course we will.  I paid $24 for those 8 classes, and it’s on the schedule for next Wednesday (we’re skipping this week, to get a little distance from the trauma).

3. Take Nights and Weekends Off.  This one is not really happening yet, but wouldn’t that be amazing??  To have a job you can leave at the office?  With healthcare and sick days?  Yes, yes it would, but that is not my life anymore.  I am, however, passing Olive off to her dad for the late-night-early-morning parenting.  Having me home all the time has made Olive MORE clingy and attached, not less, so she is literally stuck on my body for 90% of the daylight hours.  I therefore refuse to have her sleeping on me at night.  Joel has been great about this, and good thing too, because with the combination of all my workouts and outings I am completely and utterly knackered at the end of the day.  Sitting with clients in their pain and attending funding meetings NEVER wore me out like this.  My bones ache with fatigue, and I’m praying this is just a learning curve, that my body will get used to the endless trips up the stairs carrying a wriggling toddler, and the bouts of “Pony Girl” that leave us both breathless — her with laughter, me with exhaustion.  On MLK Jr. Day, my husband was off work, so I planned an actual day off for myself, complete with a shopping trip with 2 girlfriends, to look at wedding shoes for her (is there a more fun shopping trip, ever?!  The dress is a lot of pressure, but the shoes?  So much fun.) and new yay-I’m-only-nursing-once-a-day-I-got-my-boobs-back bras for me.  But having a toddler means your immune system tanks lower than could ever be prepared for, so my husband spent his day off in bed with a cold rather than at the park with his daughter, and I was on mom duty again.  But I didn’t miss the wedding shoes part of the shopping trip!  I put that baby on my back and got my ass to Nordstrom’s anyway.  She liked it a helluva lot more than she enjoyed Simply Fun Fucking Tot Gym.

4.  Enjoy the Little Things.  All in all, I’m actually having a really great time.  At the end of every day, I think, “That was really fun.  I get to do this AGAIN tomorrow?”  And  ”That was insanely exhausting.  I have to do it all over again TOMORROW?”  But mostly, the former wins out, mostly because my kid is a wildly entertaining creature.  Here is some of the cute shit she does all the time:

a) Babies can’t wink, but mine tries, and it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.  When you wink at her, she sort of squints, and then blinks both her eyes really fast and forcefully, and smiles.  It’s amazing.

b) Whenever I take her to the park, usually she gets a little fussy on the way over, and I say to her, “We are currently going to a place solely for your enjoyment!  Hang on, we’re almost there!” but she doesn’t understand and thinks I’m taking her to some boring coffee shop again.  As soon as she realizes we are going to the playground, she emits a raucous “YAYYYYYY!” and then begins profusely thanking me.  There’s nothing that will melt your heart further than a toddler yelling, “Ta ta!  Ta ta, Mommy, Ta ta!!”

c) Sometimes she puts her finger to her lips and says “shhh”.  Then we tell secrets.

d) We have a morning dance party pretty much every day.  The music shifts from Fleet Foxes (Helplessness Blues is pretty much telling the story of my life right now) to Michael Jackson to random Spotify playlists people upload for our enjoyment and/or judgment.  Olive is an excellent dance partner, and I have come up with some killer new interpretive moves.  It’s exhilarating.

5. Oh, and don’t forget to:

That’s right.

 

 

Like Lost Boys Do January 7, 2012

Filed under: Artists,Parenting,Personal,Poets,San Francisco,Work at Home Mom — rheabette @ 2:51 pm
Tags: ,

Coming home to our deliciously drafty San Francisco apartment after a week of being in overheated East Coast houses was like entering my natural habitat.  We are on the top floor, and the old windows shake so much from the wind that it feels like living in a ship, which I absolutely adore.  It was a new year, and a new era for me — I was coming home to fall headlong into uncertainty, unsure of where I am going to work next, live next, what shape my days were going to take.  I returned home with a killer cold, so I spent the first few days fending it off with tea and rest.  Gratefully, Joel had the week off, so he enjoyed a staycation playing with Olive while I watched movies set in or about the 1970′s American dance world.

Once I got past the so-stuffed-up-I-can’t-move-or-think stage, I set to going through the arduous, complicated and often dismaying process of getting unemployment for myself, and health coverage for my daughter and I.  Suffice it to say that what I learned is if you are very poor and no one is working in your home, there are plenty of services for you, but if you work even a little, even if you don’t make a living wage, there is not much to help you get back on your feet.  In any event, I worked enough out that I feel properly perched on this delicate tree branch of a life stage, not sure where I will go when I alight but balanced okay for now.

On our way home Thursday night from seeing incredible Bay Area youth perform their hip-hop tracks (Olive broke it down on the dance floor, which was insanely cute), we walked by a bespeckled gentleman sitting at a typewriter at 16th & Valencia St., with a sign that promised:

“PICK A SUBJECT
AND A PRICE
GET A
POEM”

I gave him the money I had in pocket (the amount was so measly it was embarrassing, but I really wanted a poem) to write me a poem about being unemployed.  He thoughtfully rapped out this gem on his Smith-Corona:

Don’t tell me of the greatest city

Pretty watering the grass long

So it can play along to a lost luster

But can not muster an explanation

For why this is the second most

Expensive city in the nation

But can’t afford to give those

willing to work a job

And now I stand jobless

Holding hopes and dreams

That lose steam wondering

How I’ll thrive on nothing

Maybe by making an imaginary stew

Like lost boys do

Or waking to find I need another city

~ Lynn Gentry

You too can have a prophetic poem of your choosing, even if you can’t watch him type it out while you wait on the street corner: http://www.lynngentryprose.com/pick-a-subject.html

I say it is a prophetic poem because it tapped into what is constantly a question for Joel and I: can we afford to live in this city, that we hold so dear, in which poets are waiting at street corners and beauty is at nearly every turn?  Or is it an unrequited love?  For now, we are here, and as I start my first real week of solo Work At Home Mom status, I am incredibly grateful for that.  Our city boasts mild climates that allow me to take long walks with my daughter almost any day of the year, has great Parks & Rec programs that allow us to take classes together at a low fee, and every day we seem to make new friends.

To say that I am jobless, however, is not exactly accurate, as I have both a part-time job that I can do mostly from home, and a full-time job of being Olive’s care provider.  And that is how I am seeing these next few months with Olive — as my new career.  Heck, I was paying someone else to do it three days a week before, so it’s veritably a worthy career choice.  I am going to go into it with the same focus and care that I would a job that pays monetarily — I’ll get up at the same time every day, get dressed and prepare the day’s tasks, and “complete” them with as much quality control and know-how as I can.  I believe it will be infinitely harder than any of my previous jobs, and this coming from someone who has worked in the trenches.  The reason being, I could always leave that work at the office and come home to relax.  This job is 24/7, and I have to do it while looking for paying future work, which will only be possible if Olive takes a good chunky afternoon nap (please Nap Gods, be good to me).  So, wish me luck, wish me favor in nap timings, wish me the ability to be as present as possible with this gift of time with my daughter, not to be swept away by the sea of What-Comes-Next thinking.

 

Top 10 Reasons Mindy Kaling and I Should be Friends Forever January 3, 2012

Filed under: Books,Friendship,Inspiration,Marriage,Pop Culture,TV — rheabette @ 12:36 pm
Tags: ,

Oftentimes I read a book and think, “I’d like to be friends with that person.”  Sometimes I get so attached that I think I actually AM that person’s friend, like when I think “How’s Claire doing?  Haven’t heard from her in a while.” and then I remember she just wrote a book I liked, I don’t know her from Adam.  But usually I read a rad book but just think, “that was great.  I will read more from this author, if they write more.”  and leave it at that.  However, the experience of reading Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)  just made me feel like she and I need to be friends, and it would be such a mutual win-win.  Here’s why:

1. I fill out a gold spandex music video costume much better than Ellie Kemper. 

Mindy is friends with her co-star on The Office, Ellie Kemper, and that is great, as Ellie is hilarious and they seem to have a lot of fun together.  But my overall feeling from reading Mindy’s book is that she has been spending way too much time with skinny gals and she needs some thick chicks like me around her.  The part in her book where she cries in the bathroom stall because she’s at the photo shoot (ironically for People’s Most Beautiful issue) and all they have are size 0 dresses just about broke my heart.  She wonders if she should just lose 20 pounds so these things don’t keep happening to her, and I want to take her by the shoulders and say, “No!  You are so damn perfect just as you are!  It’s insanity that those dipshits only brought dresses for mannequins!  Eat a sub and enjoy life!  You’re holding it down on network TV as a hot, normally-curvy woman, and you must continue.”  A huge part of her book is how she feels about her weight which I think is actually pretty awesome because people don’t talk about that stuff openly, but overall my feeling was, “Chubby?!  Seriously?  Girl, you just need to spend more time out of L.A., in the company of ladies who can brunch you under the table.  Okay that sounded dirty but you get my drift.  Be my bud and we’ll swap clothes (we’re the same damn size and we both love fashion!!) and eat well.”  I’m not hating on skinny ladies, I’m just saying Mindy needs some girls with booty like me to round out (you see what I did there?) her friend group.

2. I’m a Gentile and I’m Totally Interested in Hearing More about Your Mom.

Obviously I need to know more about why she choose the "sensitive bowl cut bangs" look for you, but clearly she is an accomplished bedazzler of vests and that leaves me wanting more.

Mindy bemoans the fact that since all her friends are Jewish guys, she never feels heard when she gushes about her mom.  Their eyes glaze over and they start to think about how awesome their own mom is, and don’t really believe Mindy’s mom could ever be as cool as theirs.  And Mindy’s mom sounds friggen amazing — she’s a doctor, a great cook, and in a kick-ass long-term marriage.  I’m Irish.  We’re fiercely loyal to our Mas but we don’t talk about them much.  So Minds, gab on about your incredible mother, and I’ll ooh and ahh and really mean it.  She’s clearly fascinating.

3.  My Husband and I Are Such Pals

In her chapter entitled “Married People Need To Step It Up” Mindy calls for more married couples who are friends and lovers at the same time.  Well, Joel and I are 11 years in to our relationship, and we still have fun everywhere we go.  We make songs together under the name Him Downstairs — usually we just record them, laugh, and never let them see the light of day, but we are actually performing some of them on February 4th at Queens Nails in SF.  Want to come see us in action?  It’s going to be a weird futuristic performance with awesome costumes and if you showed up it would be like Christmas in Africa.  But I digress.  The most important part of a marriage is the friendship, because shit gets real in long-term love, and you need someone you can crack up with even when you’re late on rent, sleep-deprived and the sink is full of very un-sexy dishes.  It just may be time to watch a marathon of Sons of Anarchy and binge on corner store treats to forget your troubles together.  On New Year’s Eve we went to fun party, but left early to ring in the new year alone together, because it’s just more fun that way.  We have ridiculous un-cutesy nicknames for each other — first and foremost of which is “Bines”.  Oddly enough, we somehow managed to adopt the surname of an RA from our college as our pet name for one another, to the point where our friends call us both Bines and have no idea why or where it originated.  Mystery solved?  I feel sad for your friend whose marriage is only hard work, but I do have to admit that it is quite a bit of work, some of the time.  You do have to put in the long processing hours when you’d rather be painting your toenails, you do have to go couples therapy every few years for a tune-up, you do have to compromise and say you’re sorry all the time.  But it is worth it, especially if you end up with someone who knows your airplane drink order (gingerale and cranberry) by heart and will stay up late trying to beat a video game with you.  So, we do exist, Mindy, the married couples who are also friends and call each other by their last names (I do it even though we have the same last name, which can get confusing) and I think you’d like to have a picnic with us and watch us give each other shit about whose culture has better food.  It would warm the cockles of your commitment-craving heart.

4. I Could Teach You Some Fly Dance Moves

The piece about your dance audition for Bombay Dreams had me laughing so hard my husband kept asking, “What’s wrong?  Are you okay?”   So I’m glad I got that out of my system before we go out dancing together, which we will clearly do next week.  I will help you learn how to shake your mane in a classy way that also keeps you from feeling self-conscious because you don’t have to look at your dance partner.  I won’t make you learn “the box step” or shame you for not know what a ball-change is.  Just stick with me, we’ll rock out together.  Also, I always know how to light up a Karaoke bar, never choosing a lame crooner, always a party-starter or interesting non-sequiter, so I won’t let you down at our post-party in Koreatown.

5. All Your Best Friend Rights and Responsibilities Make Perfect Sense to Me

I considered printing them out for potential BFFs in the future.  But then I realized I just needed to make you my BFF, and my work would be done.  Swapping wardrobes?  Check (see #1: I know you can’t share clothes with Jocelyn and Brenda they way we could).  Sleeping in the same bed?  Obvi.  Honesty yet gentleness about appearance?  I got you.  People call me Emily Blunt, I’m so truthful.  But I will be nice, I promise.  And all the rest, too, especially the ones about taking care of one another and being considerate — I’m great at reciprocal friendships, for realz.

You dressed up for our all-night gal-pal gab fest? Oh Mindy, you shouldn't have.

6. Your List of Favorite Eleven Moments in Comedy is Classic and Dead-on

I have seen all of them, and we can watch them over and over and laugh while eating freshly popped popcorn and texting Beyonce.  I love that you included the Racial Draft sketch.  But I’d have to add Bernie Mac’s bit in The Original Kings of Comedy and I hope you’ll agree it will make a nice baker’s dozen for your list.

7. I Think We Have The Same Sexual Values

I don’t think it’s prudish or weird that you aren’t into one-night stands and don’t understand hooking up.  I totally believe in monogamy as well and it makes me sad when I read those crazy articles about how culture is changing and no one wants commitment anymore.  And I would never ditch you for Burning Man, which I think fits into this category.

8. I am the Queen of Irish Exits and Will Never Shame You For Using Them at Will.

In fact, I will cover for you like it’s nobody’s business.  When people ask, “Where’s Mindy?”  I’ll reply, oh, she had to go check on her car.  It was acting really weird on the way over, so she’s just making sure it will still run later, much later, when she properly says goodbye to each of you at the end of the party.  In fact, maybe I should go see if she needs this wrench I keep in my purse for such occasions…”  at which point I would do an Irish Exit of my own and text you to see if you want to meet up to eat spicy curly fries and talk about why that party was so lame.  In grad school I was so infamous for leaving without telling anyone that if I started getting antsy my friend Jason would say “Goodbye Rhea.  Just go.”

9.  I have seen about as many episodes of The Office as Evan Lieberman

So, I’m not some crazy stalker who would be saying “That’s what she said” after everything you say, or would just want to be introduced to your famous friends. However, unlike Evan, I would never bail on you via text, with some lame “I’m feeling under the weather frowny face” excuse.  In fact, as I compile this list, I realize a lot of it is reassuring you that I won’t flake out on you.  I know there’s a lot of woo-woo types in California, but the only flakey thing about me is my delicious pie crust.

10. Every Friendship Needs Some Drama

POSSIBLE POINTS OF CONTENTION: Of course I follow you on Twitter (I may be an over-worked mom but I find time for the things that matter) and it appears that you are a big fan of one Ms. Deschanel.  Well, in case you haven’t heard, she is my nemesis so the two of you could not be buds.  But I do concede that the blog she’s a co-founder of, Hello Giggles, is kickass even though that name makes me want to throw up the egg and cheese sandwich I had for elevenses.  Also, would you be willing to do the lionshare of the travel for this long-distance friendship?  I’m not a hater but I don’t adore L.A.  Wouldn’t you rather come see me in the lovely Bay-to-the-A?  After all, you are my new …

 

 
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