My Charming Boy

Just a quick post, something for me to remember forever and always.

We all went to see "Go Dog Go" today at the Northwest Children's Theater. Kids thought it was great, I thought it was great for the kids. I don't actually care if I remember it or not. But, when we got back from intermission I told Zach that it was chilly in the theater. As he begins to ask if I would like his coat, Little D stops him and says "No, Mama, here take my coat" and then took of his coat and draped it over me. Well, OK its a bit much to say that his tiny coat draped - it covered me like a napkin tucked into my collar - but it warmed me all the way to my soul. That little guy is maybe the sweetest thing I know.

Far better than it could be...

I haven't been posting lately because I have been very extremely busy. And just. so. tired.
Work is not the greatest right now, the weather is gray, dreary, and mostly wet. Zach has been so busy and crazed from work and I thought he was going to burn the house down because he found rats in the basement. My new car has a lovely new car smell which can only be squelched by the immense guilt in the pit of my stomach that plagues me every time I even think about the car, a guilt that grows as I literally watch the meter on the gas gauge sink as I drive. I am worried about which school is best for the kids, stressed that our nation is owned by the greediest bunch of assholes in the whole wide world. Worried that everything I do in my life is participating in the destruction of our planet...

And yet... oh boy. I am overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of each and every one of my worries in comparison with what is happening in Japan. I watch the videos of the tsunami and wonder how I could possibly imagine that I have anything wrong with my life. I do not believe in god, do not believe in much of anything but science and being good and kind to one another because its right. But I can't shake the feeling that if I get too wrapped up in my daily humdrum worries, life will knock me on my butt with a horrible wake up call. You think you've got problems now? Wait 'til you get a load of what I have in store for you...

When my sister and I were teens and would complain about not getting enough sleep, my mom used to say "Its just tired." and we didn't understand. And then I had babies, and nights upon nights of waaay too little sleep. I stumbled through days in a daze, and still managed to survive - taking care of a small helpless baby at the same time! And now tired doesn't phase me at all. The kind of tired I face now is nothing in comparison to the baby times. I feel like my problems and stresses right now are all just background noise, stuff to take the place of real problems. If something really bad happened to me or my family I wouldn't give a second thought to any of the things I stress about now.

So, I will give money to the Red Cross. I will worry for the people of Japan. I will keep my eye on the potential for nuclear meltdown... but I wil also try to honor the people who are suffering in a different way. I will make an effort to let more of the pointless worry go away. I will try to feel more thankful everyday for the bounty of happiness and health I am lucky enough to have. I cannot comprehend what the people in Japan are dealing with right now, but I can make sure to appreciate my lack of comprehension...

Here is my little shuffleboard player... I am thinking of taking her to a retirement center to play some shuffleboard with the elderly. I think they would get a big kick out of her, and she loves her some shuffleboard, and being the center of attention.

The Boy

I am sitting here after too much work today listening to Peggy Orenstein talk about her book "Cinderella Ate My Daughter." After having one of each gender, I can say with all my heart that so much of who they are is in their base genetic code. The inherent "girliness" or "boyishness" is a piece of them. I think that we can exacerbate it to an extent - perhaps sometimes to their harm - but at the lowest level, they like what they like. Neither of my kids are at the gender extremes, and I think they both help to pull each other into a healthy middle. Davinci enjoys princess movies but is by no means obsessed with them (in fact her obsession is reserved for the Nightmare Before Christmas). Little D likes knights and spooky things but is not car, machine or ball obsessed. Basically, Zach and I have created a carbon copy of each of us. I know you might say it was our parenting that made them this way, and again, that accounts for some of it but by no means all (or even most) of it. I am thankful that they are not so easily fit into the boxes of their genders, but I believe it has much less to do with our parenting than it does with our DNA.

As I listened to Orenstein talk, I was reminded of when the true extent of Little D's Boyness was thrust upon me. He was two-and-a-half and I was dropping him off at his hippy dippy preschool, where they eat quinoa and all of the toys are made of wood and silk. Two of the boys are up in the loft, pointing combs menacingly at everyone below. Little D sees this, and rushes up to the loft to join them. I thought "Oh man, why can't he just go play with the kitchen stuff like he usually does?" when he sweetly picks up a baby doll from her crib in the loft. My heart soars with the sight of my sweet little nurturing boy in the midst of so much violence. And then. Then he flips the doll onto her back, pointing her head-first towards the people below, aiming her like a gun - a word which he at this point did not even know, much less had he seen one used in all of the Little Bears, Koala Brothers, or Maggie and the Ferocious Beasts he had watched on TV. My son, turning innocent dolls into weapons of doom.

P.S. Two weeks ago at work I was worried that we would not have enough teen volunteer applicants for us to be able to be picky and select the cream of the crop... Well now applications are open for one more day, and we have almost 3 times as many applicants as spaces available... be careful what you wish for.

The Naked Knight

So, my people like to stay home way more than I do. I think that often when I am home, I am thinking of all the other stuff I need to get done and see the messes that need to be cleaned. When we are out doing family stuff, I can just enjoy what we are doing and be more fully in the moment. Zach and the kids would rather stay inside all day doing a million and one different things (most of which add enormously to the mess in the house) from the comfort of their pajamas. Well, Little D sometimes dispenses with the need for his pajama bottoms... Here he is busily setting "traps" all over the house - this yarn covered two flights of our house and was carefully wrapped in, out, over, under and through many of the items in our house. This kept him very busy for an extended amount of time, and is well worth the mess. At the end I reclaimed pieces that were easy and broke the yarn in two when I got to a knot. So now we have about 6 smaller balls of yarn for future traps.

So while Little D set traps and DaVinci was re-reading the Hobbit (she and Zach just finished reading it together and she LOVED it), I went out with the dog - the one member of the house who is always eager to go out - to the dog park. Later Zach and DaVinci walked down to the video store to rent "The Hobbit" - the animated version from the 70's (Did you know that in the new Hobbit, Bilbo will be played by Martin Freeman - "Tim" from the original British "The Office?" I love him, and can't wait to see it!).  We watched the Hobbit with the kids at rest time, and Davinci was super excited that the film featured many of the "songs" from the book. She is the ONLY person I know who likes the songs.

Early this evening we had a sitter over while we saw "The Last Circus" to finish out the round of five Portland International Film Festival movies I have seen over the last two weeks. It was crazy crazy crazy, fun, weird, and I cannot recommend it to everyone, but I had a blast seeing it. Definitely the most memorable thing I saw this year. The other films I caught at the festival: "Good Morning to the World" - Japanese movie that was just so-so, but fun to hear Japanese interchanges, so different from Americans. "Boy" - Adorable film from New Zealand that I can easily recommend to ANYONE. "Even the Rain" - great movie from Spain which was simultaneously about the atrocities of Christopher Columbus "discovering" the new world and the modern day struggles in Bolivia starring Gael Garcia Bernal who is adorable. The pretense was that we were watching a film crew making a movie about Columbus in Bolivia and we got to see scenes from that movie. It really made me want a "true story of Columbus" movie. "Of Love and Other Demons" - a Spanish movie not to be confused with Jake and Anne's "Love and Other Drugs in theaters now. I think this is the movie that people picture when they hear that I am going to a film festival. Boring, with lots of sssslllooowww scenes where people look wistfully at each other while a woman chants acapella. So now you are thinking - "No wonder she can't keep up a blog, she is at movies all the time!" This was a lot of movies, even for me.

Admitting the truth

Ok... So its becoming increasingly obvious that I cannot do all these things... I am too too too busy. Some of the things I am too busy with are fun things (hanging with the kids, pub quiz with friends and family), and many are not fun things (constant housework and an overwhelming amount of work work).

I have been trying to make this blog a part of my daily life, simple snippets to capture what we are doing with our days. I feel like I am travelling to Mars at light speed and trying to tell everyone each thing I see out the window on my way. I am so very busy, and at the end of the night after work, kids, exercise,  house stuff, I really don't want to be responsible for anything else. The daily pressure of the blog is just one more weight on my shoulders and I already feel like I am carrying too much. This pressure happens to coincide with my busiest time of work so I am not super surprised but maybe a little disappointed.

So (deep breath), I am NOT going to do a daily blog. I cannot. Well let's face it I probably could, but I don't want to. I will try to post frequently, but am not going to set myself up for failure at a task that isn't actually necessary to my work or home life. I can fail at plenty of more important things without adding this to the list. Sorry dear readers (of which I think there are 4 of you). Sorry future me with the rude teenagers who is desperately reading this blog in the hopes of remembering a time in which your children love love loved you.

And major props to my friend Sarah, who has a very similarly chaotic life as mine, who manages to find the time to get it all down in writing. Rock on, sister.

As my update for now - it snowed a depressingly small amount last night. When the prospect of snow comes to Portland, it is all anyone talks about for days and days, and it almost always is less impressive than predicted. School was called off (but probably didn't need to be) and the kids went outside early while the snow was still falling to catch some flakes on their tongue and throw snowballs at each other. Tashi was in heaven - her first snow fall and she was scampering all over the yard. Now at 11:00am, it is almost all gone. Bummer.

Little D is reading like a champ. He and I have a goal to finish the learn-to-read book by the time we head to Canada (just under a month from now!) and I think we will make it. He is at the stage now where he is sounding out every word he sees - "No right turn on red," etc. It makes for a very talkative car trip. I am hoping that he will be able to read to himself on the long car ride to Canada.

Running on the wheel...

First off I would like to say that I have an overwhelming sympathy for onions. I think that I may be at the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to reactions to cutting onions. I feel pretty strong in most aspects, think I have a decently high tolerance for pain (I did push two babies out of my vag with no meds thankyouverymuch) and yet... onions. I love eating them, I like cooking them, but I am a wreck when cutting them. Seriously. And the tears and the pain goes on and on and on.

In other news, I love the fact that I work part time. I LOVE getting to spend so much time with the kids, only having Little D in school 3 days a week, picking up Davinci everyday after school. It is worth so much to me, and I feel fortunate to have worked this situation out. However, I think that it makes both my jobs (at home and at work) MORE busy. I cannot possibly do my job in 20 hours a week, and so I am always pulling extra hours or not getting everything done, which leaves me stressing about work outside even when I'm not working. When I am home I am always trying to fit in all of the things that I think I should be doing with/for the kids, the things that I would do if I didn't have a job. And after they go to bed, at the end of the day, I have a REALLY hard time rallying to do anything productive or useful. If anything I am usually just getting more work done. I think this is also exacerbated right now by the fact that Zach is doing way too much. He works full time, and is at home one day a week to watch Little D while I am at work, AND is taking two grad school classes - including a DOOZY one this quarter. He is either 1) at work, 2) at class, 3) playing with kids or 4) study study studying. I cannot believe his resolve, and I am amazed at how he can do it all. It also makes me appreciate (and sorely miss) the other things he used to do with his time. He has less time for the day to day dishes, pickup, cooking, etc. We usually do a pretty good job of balancing the family duties so I am really feeling it as his time is stretched thin. We are both in general feeling like there is not enough time in the day, and the months and weeks are flying by. I have to remind myself that we are getting in our fun, and one of our main priorities is hanging out with the kids (Davinci, Little D and I had an amazing UNO session tonight). The things that are falling by the wayside are the chores, the exercise, the things that I will not care about when I look back on this time, so I am working to care a little less about them...

Happy Valentine's Day!

Zach and Davinci have been reading The Hobbit every evening before bed. Davinci LOVES it, and will act out scenes on command. When Zach found this plush Gandalf and Orc online, he could not resist. So we gave them to them this morning. We addressed the card to My Preciousssss, and Davinci could not stop chuckling.

People keep asking Zach and I what we are doing for Valentine's day... the only answer I have is that we are reveling in the bounty of what our love has created... by which I mean dinner at home with the kids. We truly truly love each other, we get along 99.9% of the time, we are each other's best friends. With this much love, it feels a bit cumbersome to schedule something romantic on the same night as everyone else. Suck it, Valentine's Day.

We bought a new car. Gulp.

Okay so I think I am a little in denial and haven't taken a picture yet so I will just add it in when I do (and by the way could it please stop raining for a minute? That would really make me more inclined to stop for photos).

We knew we needed to get a new car for a multitude of reasons. We seem to have a lemon Prius. We were so happy to have it, thankful for the energy savings, etc etc. The savings were not so high as we thought (and was advertised) but the mpg was still better than any other car on the road. But then it started having issues. More than one, and the incompetent dealership we had our extended warranty through (*coughRonTonkincough*) didn't seem to understand what was going on or how to fix it. When our warranty expired, we knew we were only weeks to months from the mystery problem recurring and then we would be out thousands of dollars while service people tried to figure out what was wrong.

We were also coming to terms with the fact that for the moment, we may have outgrown a small sedan sized vehicle. I know I know- all of you who know me are laughing your asses off, so happy to see me falling from my high hybrid horse but there you have it. We cannot at this point have a single other person in our car. We cannot even bring a friend home from school. Do others have it worse? You Bet! Would we be okay if we could only have a compact car? Yes, and frankly we would not even notice it most of the time. Hell - we could get by pretty well on just one car again if we needed to. But am I growing just an ickle bit tired of being up here by myself on the high horse? Of driving the tiny car while single people I know drive around in their GIANT SUV's? Yes. I am. I do not want a life of driving a big car - in fact I would love to get to the point where I am not rushing from dropoffs to work to pick-ups and that riding my bike and public transportation will once again become a viable option. But for our life now I think the environmental impacts of driving a larger car are outweighed for me by the amount we would utilize the capacity the larger vehicle provides.

So I did my research, looked for a bigger car that wasn't too big. Something that gave us extra people carrying capacity and usable space. What we ended up with was a RAV4 with a 3rd row of seats. The back row folds down into the floor when not in use, making a large trunk space. It has decent gas mileage (when compared to similar or larger cars of course, it sucks compared to any compact car) and is a couple feet shorter than a minivan or full size SUV. The third row will allow us to participate in carpooling, taking friends home from school, driving anyplace with Andrew when he is in town. It will make vacations less of an origami project - I became an expert at filling up every nook and cranny of the Prius to make room for all of the stuff we needed for camping, etc.

Can you tell yet that I have a lot of anxiety and guilt about it still? I have had the weight of the dying of our planet on my shoulders since I first went to outdoor school in 5th grade. Most of the jobs I have ever had has dealt with teaching people about the value and importance of protecting and saving our planet. It feels like a dishonor when I do things I don't HAVE to do that I know have a directly negative impact on the world. I feel guilty getting paper cups at coffee shops, using a ziplock instead of a tupperware, dead batteries make me shudder...

There is a part of me that would love to traipse the Earth as certain others do - to either not know or not care. To think that I am a part of manifest destiny, and that everything around me was put there for my use and abuse. Or maybe I would like to be a native person deep in the Amazon rainforest, left with no choice but to have nothing. To live in the States, with all of the disposable everything all around us, with a pace of life that demands getting from one place to the next quickly, is for me a life of almost constant guilt. I know it is the guilt of the incredibly privileged, the woe of the wealthy, the burden of the burdenless. But it's my guilt dammit.

I put a bird on it and called it art.

I finally did it. I have thought about getting a tattoo for years and years, but could never commit to something that I would want on my body forever. When I turned 30, I decided that I would get a tattoo that represented both kids (because I knew I would never never regret them), and then I just couldn't figure out what it would look like and so I procrastinated some more. Here I am, 33, and I finally did it. I had a great experience with a super nice tattoo artist (Dave from Oddball Tattoo) who helped make it exactly how I pictured it in my head. He sounded excited to be giving me my first tattoo rather than snooty that I was not already covered in tattoos. It was quick, not very painful, and with great results.

And yes, I am now a lady with a shaved head and a tattoo. I will be shopping for motorcycles soon.

The great tease...

Every year when the crocuses peek their heads out all over Portland, I get excited. I immediately fast forward to the next two seasons of cherry blossoms littering the streets, of beautiful summer sun and fat red strawberries. And then, without fail, I am crushed by the remaining months of winter, of rain, of days that never seem to get light enough. When am I going to learn that these are winter blooming flowers? These pretty little things that look so much like spring, like sunshine and happiness, they are either a cruel trick that winter plays, or maybe just a hint of sunshine to tide us over until spring.

By the way, the above photo was taken with my iphone... not too shabby.