September 2008 Archives
Not Rain Nor Sleet Nor Coughs And Sniffles Will Keep Us From Our Appointed Fun. Neither will "Bone Crusher," in case you were wondering.
23. Kind of hard to click on a link that small, I know, but it's worth it.
Feather Foot - The Legend of the Mountain Doctor Returns made me laugh off and on for about two hours.
I'm starting to feel kind of shallow here, because most of the writing I'm highlighting on Mondays is funny stuff. So here's This Is Your Nation On White Privilege to balance things out a bit.
And on that solemn note, enjoy your week!
This is how it goes in my office when someone makes a run to Sonic.
E: Do you want anything? I'm going to Sonic. Of course you don't want anything, you're healthy.
Me: Actually, I want a milkshake. Here's all the money I stole from my husband this morning, let me know how much it turns out to be and I may owe you.
E: Oh please, don't worry about it.
Me: Just let me know, I can pay you back tomorrow.
(Later that day...)
E: Here is it, I just put it on my card, so let me see how much I owe you.
Me: Whatever, don't worry about it at all.
E: I'm pretty sure I owe you ten cents.
Me: Because that totally matters in my budget.
E: Let me see if I have a dime.
Me: Seriously, it's fine, I'm good.
E:If you need it, let me know. If you have a vending machine emergency.
Me: I will come to you first, I promise.
E: Do you even drink Sprite anymore? Of course you don't drink Sprite anymore. That was just a pregnancy thing.
No matter which two people on the team are having the conversation, the obsession with minute amounts of money and indebtedness just fascinates me. Through careful observation and notetaking, anthropologists would probably be able to determine the minimum and optimum number of disclaimers from each side.
I wonder if the elaborate nature of the ritual is because we're in Texas, or whether it happens the same way up North.
One part of the exchange is specific to me, though, and that's the repeated insistence that I have far better eating habits than anyone else. This delusion arises because I don't drink coffee or caffeinated soda, don't like chocolate, don't eat meat, and usually bring my lunch instead of going out. But these people also know me well enough to have promised me cake every day if I would come back to work, so it's not like they haven't seen my love for sugar in action. Honestly, the only reason I don't bring a pint of ice cream for lunch these days is that it would melt on the bus.
My husband has an amazing talent for picking up verbal bad habits. What starts as a funny joke once or twice gets stuck in his speech pattern until he's said it 5.2 million times and I WANT TO STRANGLE HIM. Then he starts working to get it under control. About a year later, it's finally extinguished.
The first one that got really out of control pluralization. One of us made a joke out of pluralizing some noun, and then that noun was pluralized all the time, and then other nouns were pluralized in almost every sentence, and then I threatened divorce. Not really. I just complained a lot about hearing him talk as though he had more than one wife, son, and car, when to the best of my knowledge he has but one of each. Ditto for his head, the computer, the kitchen table, and several other frequently discussed objects.
The toaster oven escaped the pluralization episode, only to meet a different fate. I anthropomorphize objects, particularly ones that have been with me for a long time. This toaster oven was purchased when I moved out of a dorm and into an apartment, which was 1993? 1994? Let's just say over a decade. So it's practically an old friend, and I made the mistake of calling it "that guy" one day when I was tired and couldn't think of the word "toaster."
Do you see what's coming?
C-Man thought it was funny, so he started doing it too. First the toaster, and then the heating pad became "the hot guy," which was amusing, and then it spread. It spread and spread and spread until any object at any time could be referred to as "that guy" whether he could think of the actual name for it or not.
Then toys for our son began arriving in the house, and they too fell into the new classification scheme. The only toy that was not called "that guy" was a tomato. (Because it was short and round?)
From the way I'm writing this, you'd think this was all my husband's doing, but I got stuck with it too. One of the most difficult tasks ahead for me in raising my middle-class white son is going to be making him aware that the world should not revolve around rich white boys, but here I was going around saying "that guy" when I meant a diaper, a sock, or a drinking glass.
Feminists get ridiculed for obsessing about things like this. "Why can't they focus on something important?" people complain, "It doesn't mean anything, it's just a word, and 'guy' is practically gender neutral at this point anyway!" I admit, I've have had moments of impatience with women who complain about being part of a group addressed as "you guys." Though I agreed that the person using the phrase "you guys" could have been more courteous, it just didn't seem like a big deal to me as a marker of sexist oppression. (Side note: Why doesn't everyone just use the gender neutral second person plural "y'all"?)
The "guy"-ification of every inanimate object in my home didn't seem like as big of a deal as, say, the pay gap or funding for rape crisis centers, but it started to get creepy. Even C-Man had to admit that it WAS gendered. We were specifically using the word "guy" instead of "thing" or "doohickey" or "whatsit," and we both felt like it was gendered when we said it. Our mental images were becoming gendered. And Boy Detective was spending all his time hearing about how everything in his world was a guy unless proved otherwise.
Yuck.
So we started getting rid of it. Every time I noticed one of us saying "that guy," I would loudly say "that THING." And somehow, despite the record levels of sleep deprivation experienced by parents of a baby who won't sleep through the night, we started remembering the actual names for the objects in our environment. Amazing.
Next on my list in battling everyday sexism... oh, who am I kidding, I'm too tired to make a list.
Just three today, and they're short and sweet,
Return to Revolver. (Specifically, the essay questions at the end.)
The Brita pitcher goes on the left. Always. It always goes on the left. In every refrigerator I've had since I got it, it's gone on the left.
When it is temporarily out of its home, leaving a space on the left, DO NOT PUT SOMETHING ELSE THERE.
Srsly. I live with heathens.
- My one year old son is walking.
- My eighteen month old daughter is walking bowlegged and she seems a little slow.
- I want my son to wear shoes sometimes.
- My son isn't wearing shoes right now.
- I want my son's feet to develop naturally.
You should go read all of these. Really. They're quite good.
On Backorder. The open letter format done right.
Ready, Set,... Ah Hell. The last bit about Zen at the end is especially funny.
Today I Burnt The House Down and Glued Human Body Parts Together. Parenting is going to be AWESOME.
I Research Kittens so you don't have to.
the lipgloss is Bamboo Pink. You people and your caffeine, I really don't know what's up with that.
Child with a child pretending. About being a boy and growing up to be a man. Wow.
Mawwaige!. Sometimes a few well chosen words are just enough.
C-Man, pushing the door open into the kitchen: What the f*&K?!
Me, behind him: What?
C-Man: There's some kind of crazy twisted metal thing on the floor!
Me, peeking: That's the dough hook for the KitchenAid.
Boy Detective has now completed his first year on Earth as an independent being. However, he has his own blog where we rhapsodize about his cuteness and cleverness and fabulosity. While I've ended up mentioning him on this blog WAY more often than I'd anticipated, this is still my space to do with as I please. So I'm going to talk about me.
In relation to being a mother.
(DAMMIT! He wins again.)
My life right now isn't awful. It's actually pretty damn luxurious. I essentially work full time split between two jobs and one paid blogging gig. I spend 10 hours a week in an office, so my commuting time is minimal, and I have a full time nanny. Wah wah wah I haven't had a decent night's sleep since January of 2007, but honestly I'm almost used to it by now and Amy's ice cream covers the gap nicely most of the time.
I'm just not sure what to do next.
I had somewhat realigned my self image to fit into the idea of being a stay at home mother, because I really liked the "stay at home" part. I always thought I'd be totally awesome at that. After six months of it I was pretty much losing my mind, though, because I hadn't really factored in the baby's constant demands for my attention when fantasizing about time to quilt and read blogs.
Stop laughing. It's not that I thought I would have time to do all of that. I have actually met mothers and babies before. It's just that I was running two parallel and totally disconnected imaginary future lives in my head simultaneously, and I mistakenly identified them both as "don't go to work anymore" so they got mixed up. THIS one, the one I am living, is the mama one. The OTHER one was supposed to be clearly marked "winning the lottery fantasy."
So for months seven through eleven, I had a babysitter three days a week and worked part time from home. Some of the work was paying, some of it was networking and writing to build a portfolio, and some of it was just getting my sanity back by THINKING. For AN HOUR AT A TIME WITHOUT BEING INTERRUPTED.
(This is the part where all the other mothers I know kill me with sticks.)
Messing around like that, though, I could still think of mothering as my primary occupation.
When my old boss needed my help, I agreed to work part time for a few months - upping the babysitter into a full time nanny - and then make a decision about whether to go back in earnest or quit again. The way that job works during particular times, you can't do it halfway, and they're coming up on one of those times. I'm helping them get ready, but I don't know if I want to stay for the madness. A lot of the faces on the team have changed in the past year, but the new kids are good kids, and being part of a smart, funny group of hard workers feels good. I'm just about out of accessible friends here in Austin, and work can provide a surrogate for that.
(As much as I love my mother in law, who is the aforementioned babysitter turned nanny, we talk about the baby almost all day long. And she doesn't curse as much as I do.)
Working full time also requires another shift in self image. I said to C-Man on Sunday that we both work full time and we have a nanny. He looked quite startled. I'm quite startled. I only work in the office 10 hours a week, but I'm still working almost all day every day, and often at night after baby's lights out. MIL takes kiddo to the park, the library, the store, and now a "baby gym" class at a facility that I've never even seen.
That sounds WAY more wistful than I feel, because wow do I ever love going to the office and not having anyone pull my hair for HOURS at a time. However, it's definitely a mental reset to realize that I'm working as much as my husband and the primary person spending time with Boy Detective during the day is not me.
Of course, he interrupts me often during the day and often plays in the same room where I'm working, so I get all of the inconvenience AND all of the freaky "where's my kid" feelings. Aces!
I know the "aah, things have changed, I feel funny" feeling will settle down here presently. But then I really don't know what to do. I like working. I like being kick ass at something, which I totally am at my old job. It's interesting work. I like money.
How else am I going to afford my Prius and lattes, people?
I also really like being available to Boy Detective during most of the week and knowing what his days are like. MIL is his grandma, and we are beyond beyond beyond lucky to the nth degree that she is his caregiver because wow, how lucky is that? She's family and she's having a good time and we're supporting her with the money I make - kind of like a multi-generational family except that she gets to go home at night so Boy Detective doesn't wake EVERYONE up. But I'm his mama.
If I go back into my old profession, I'm not going to be working at my house. I'm also not going to be facing the terror of entertaining a one year old all day by myself, which is good because I hate it.
(You heard me. I hate it. He's my son, and I love him, but I hate being the only adult responsible for entertaining him for 10+ hours. Last weekend C-Man was out of town and it almost knocked me dead.)
If I give up my old job again, I'll be lucky to make half of what I do there by working from home. That's probably okay, because I'm privileged and fortunate and I planned well, so I only need to make enough to keep MIL from having to take another job and to pay my own income taxes. I think I can scrape that together.
(Again, killed with sticks.)
So after a year of mixing mama with worker bee in various recipes, I guess I'm asking the universe to give me a sign. What to do? And then I'll work out how to revise my self-description again.
I'm going to mix up my usual Monday thing and instead of linking to darn good writing, I'm going to link to posts that are darn good writing down of conversations, because that's an art in and of itself. Eight of them, because most of them are short, and that's how many I have.
I can't tell whose side I'm on.
She's not trying to kill herself, honest.
The sincerity could almost knock you down.
Just remember, she's the one who brought up chlamydia.
(And this imaginary conversation is also good.)
(And I'm not sure this counts as a conversation per se, but it's funny.)
And finally, the best one of all.
Now go do some work!
I turned thirty four today.
C-Man played with Boy Detective for the better part of a day so I could upgrade my Movable Type installation in a quiet house. Granted, we all had meals together, but aside from that I spent the morning and early afternoon pretty much by myself.
It was the best birthday present ever.
I also like the ankle bracelet he got me - silver and fair trade, because he pays attention. It was a bit touch and go for a minute there, because he asked Boy Detective to get it out of its hiding place, so I almost ended up with one of C-Man's socks for a present instead.
Grace made me really sweet cupcakes (Nigella's, apparently), and my father in law and his wife brought me flowers, and my mother in law made me a key lime pie. She also babysat Boy Detective so C-Man and I could go see the new Vin Diesel / Michelle Yeoh movie Babylon A.D. and then eat delicious vegetable tempura sushi.
(The movie, by the way, was good enough that at one point I thought "I will buy this on DVD when it comes out." Then it basically threw up all over itself. I go to these things so you don't have to.)
A few years ago, I wrote a post on my birthday about where I had been 10 years, 5 years, and a year previous. I thought I was going to do it every year. When I didn't manage to, it was due to disorganization, not lack of desire.
But I think thirty four is about finally being ok with now. I used to think I'd be upset if all my boxes of memorabilia burned down in a house fire. I tried to figure out how I'd take it all with me if we had to evacuate due to an impending natural disaster. I started letting go of people in my life a few years ago if I was the only one doing the work of maintaining the friendships, but I'd been somewhat obsessed with the objects and evidence of my past. Now I'm letting it go. It doesn't feel so threatening anymore that I might lose those objects and "forget" about where I've been. I've finally realized that whatever comes forward with me will do so without me dragging it.
The only thing that would leave a chunk out of my heart would be losing all the baby pictures, so we keep a baby blog online that doubles as a handy offsite backup. But aside from that, I have C-Man, and I have Boy Detective, and I love them so tremendously, and I have The Dog, and my family and friends, and I have me, and I like me plenty well (as you might have noticed), and that's all I need.
That and a glass of water, 'cause these cupcakes are basically half sugar. Yum.
