Category Archives: Can’t decide on a category

Phew!

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Wanna hear something nice? Nice things are welcome, aren’t they, even on snarky, whiny blogs?

Well, a dear friend had open heart surgery today (his second in eight years) and he’s coming out of the anesthesia right now.

That, to me, is quite nice. When a strong, sweet, awesome teenager full of potential and spirit makes it through what seems both scary and routine (until it’s your kid and you’re waiting for more than six hours just outside those closed doors and then it’s not even a tiny bit routine) and you get a post-op report and hear that his lungs are happy and his heart is happy and his body is beaten but soon to be happy…that’s nice.

Hang in there, buddy. You’re doing really well.

Yay for fun on the Interwebs

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Ah, the link post. You’ll forgive me when you see and read these…

Hilarity and awesomeness in this post rooted in mocking a cat lover. Please try to laugh quietly. Not sure you can, though.

An interesting game where you can try to balance the federal budget by honoring your priorities. See how much you can cut, or add, or raise, or lower debt, taxes, spending at this Marketplace Money citizenship game.

And, to round it out, a shocking and adorable and, have I mentioned, jaw-dropping video from a girl and her science project.

Children for fun and profit

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Just kidding. They’re only sometimes fun and rarely offer profit.

But having kids is kind of fun once they have interests, since the engaged parent learns stuff they’d never care about otherwise. For instance, I know the name of every stinking truck on the planet. Thanks, Butterbean.

Peanut and I were talking about animals, and I had to do some research to answer his questions. Here you go. Enjoy. Tell your kids. You’re welcome.

(Source: Interwebs, various sites. I’m not in grad school anymore, yo, so screw MLA and APA citation requirements. You’ll take what I give you and you’ll like it.)

(Fine. If I say Harvard’s database of bionumbers, will you shut your coffee hole?)

(NB: the Interwebs are full of liars and cheats, so tell your kids this information only if you’re used to telling them stuff that will get them mocked by the smart kids at school.)

Ahem.

The most plentiful species on earth is an ocean dwelling cyanobactiera called Prochlorococcus.
The most plentiful animal species is krill.
Half the global biomass is prokaryotic bacteria, a shocking amount of which are subsurface.
There is more cattle flesh than humans flesh by about 50%.
And there are 108 ants (which is only three times the total biomass of humans, except in my house, where those little effers outweigh even me.)
And the aquatic crustacean copepods constitute the largest animal biomass; though krill have more animals, the copepods weigh more.

So speaketh the Interwebs.  Please, for the love of Sleep, do not cite my blog for a paper you’re writing for school.
Because I’m not a scientist? Okay, sure. Use that one.
Because my research is shoddy now that nothing matters and nobody cares? I’d prefer you kept that between us.
Because I made up half this data? No. I didn’t make it up. I just didn’t cross check it or proofread it or really pay much attention beyond getting it posted so I can go to bed.

Mmmmmkay?

Thanks, Google

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Dozens of people have found this blog by searching “what is ambivalent parent?”

So nice to be the poster child for something. Even if it’s as the answer to a grammatically incorrect question.

Even if it’s an inaugural post from three years ago.

Maybe Google+ could rewrite the question for them. “Who is ambivalent parent?” “What is ambivalent parenting?” “How does one adore their own children yet want to run screaming from the building?”

Roundup

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Found this daily roundup and am grateful. I wish I had time to agglomerate all the best news from the week. Happy that New Communities Daily by Genius Now Blog is doing this for us. My favorite article featured? The Salon response to the hysteria all over the Interwebs last week when Oxford University’s PR office issued a request that all press releases follow AP style. Serial-comma purists everywhere freaked, thinking that Oxford University was dropping its eponymous comma. Passion, tirades, and hilarity for grammar nerds ensued, for it’s rare that we have opportunities for punctuation smugness outside of The Blog of Unnecessary Quotations Marks.

What else caught my eye? A disturbing article about the misinformation from Japan about the Fukushima nuclear disaster. I’ve already read a report that my local dairy and produce has radioactive materials from the nuclear plant’s meltdown. I don’t know what we can do about local, organic food that tests high for radiation. Buy McD*n*ld’s instead? Hell no. Processed C*nAgra crapola? Of course not. So I feel helpless. And I can’t help thinking about the pain of generations of Japanese parents as I fear for all of us, especially our little dudes.

After that downer, I can tell you something that made me smile this week, though. A fabulous Saturday morning, getting my favorite breakfast next to my favorite random art (yes, that’s a hand-knit bike-rack cozy) and tromping through our favorite creek. Oh, so much smiling that morning. Bread and cheese and yarn bombs and water and lichens and dogs and sunshine and kids. Doesn’t get better, y’all.

What else? Well, there’s the debut of this. A couple of my friends were tired of feeling lost and frumpy and frustrated with their jobs. [Note: *feeling* that way. They are smart and funny and awesome and supportive. So their itching to use their skills for more than reading riot acts and writing lists of house rules I completely understand, but their sense of frumpiness was all in their heads. I thought they were 20 kinds of amazing before their new venture.] Now they’re standing tall in the name of replacing our yoga pants with real clothes. Go subscribe to their blog…it’s new and content is coming fast and furious.

What I dig about Dump Your Frump is the insistence that whatever is important to you can stay important to you, even when parenting (or work of any stripe) dominates your every waking moment. You do matter, and you can take little steps to remind yourself of that every day. The delightful ladies behind Dump Your Frump haven’t inspired me to care about makeup or clothes, but they have goaded me into shaking off my intellectual burlap sack. I have lists and lists in my daily notebook of priorities, as though writing down what’s important will make me cleave to my passions. Hasn’t worked. I still just have lists that make me feel like an underachiever. But Dump Your Frump is making me look at those lists…HARD…and commit to them. Writing. Reading. Exercise. More writing. Doctorate. Novel. Hard work, belief in self, meditation. Okay, fine…maybe some EWG-approved mascara and lip gloss. Because the little things really do make a difference.

now that's dumping your frump!

Discombobulated

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We don’t know yet which kindergarten Peanut is going to attend.

We don’t know yet what to do with our days this summer.

We don’t know if we’re staying in this new place, which we quite like but which is bleeding us dry.

We don’t know if Butter is signing “Dad” or “cow” or “horse” until he moooooooooos.

That usually clears it up.

Pay me to do what I do anyway

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Preschool auction. Party, good time, and dreaded fundraiser. I don’t want to spend more money on this delightful school. I want to contribute and give and support. Without writing a check.

I’m cheap that way.

I mean caring.

Anyway, I wanted to donate an item to the auction. Writing? Sure, I could. But if my time sells for too little, I’ll be mad that I’m writing virtually for free. Copyediting? Now we’re talking. Everyone needs that, though they think they don’t. But again, what if nobody bids high enough? Will I end up working for $5 an hour when I could get $100 from some soulless corporation? Hell no.

If I’m going to offer something that will pay me a measly wage, it’s gonna be something I’d already do. Free. I’m gonna make a profit at this auction, yo.

And so I offered the following:

Five Hours of Worrying about the Topic(s) of Your Choice

“Something on your mind but you just can’t find the time to give it your full attention? An issue you know should be keeping you up at night but you’re just too tired? I will worry about it for you. I’ll think, mull, muse over it for five hours total. I’ll research new reasons you should worry about your issue, find implications you’d never dreamed about, and lose sleep over it for you.

Don’t give it another thought. I’ll do that for you!

I am an expert at spending time I don’t have worrying about things I can’t change. My specialty is turning molehills into mountains. My references include anyone who has ever met me.”

And you know what? Three bidders. The runner-up asked if I’d consider giving them the same deal: they’d pay the school the winning price to get the 5 hours they didn’t win.

So now I’m spending 10 hours (total, not consecutive) worrying about other people’s concerns. So they can relax. So I can give my own stuff a rest for a while. And so someone can finally pay me (sort of) to do what no University in the land can train another neurotic to do. Be me.

Eeyore by necessity

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Sleep deprivation makes you cranky, fat, and dangerous.

It also makes you gloomy.

Take a look at this finding, reported in a New York Magazine feature that is, as far as I can tell, the same as the third chapter in Nurture Shock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman:

“Perhaps most fascinating, the emotional context of a memory affects where it gets processed. Negative stimuli get processed by the amygdala; positive or neutral memories get processed by the hippocampus. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. The result is that sleep-deprived people fail to recall pleasant memories yet recall gloomy memories just fine.” (p. 3 in the NYM article linked and p. 35 in the book)

Great. Fat, grumpy, and incapable of retaining joy.

I can’t wait to hang out with me, ‘cuz that’s a winning combination.

(On a related note, how do I not have a category titled “Holy Guacamole, I Need Sleep!”? My first didn’t sleep through the night until he was over Three. The second is not exactly on the fast track to quiet nights, with or without ear infections, teething, and gobs of physical exertion. So I filed this under everything except Yoga. I’m too tired for yoga.)

(Also? Go read Nurture Shock. There are chapters on praise, sleep, race, lying, gifted programs, siblings, teenagers, self-control, social skills, and language; all compelling, well written, clear, thoroughly researched and revelatory.) I’ll leave the superlatives to the cover matter, but suffice it to say I will finish it before I finish The Pale King. That’s huge, given how little reading time I have and how much I want to read DFW’s final novel. Go get it. Library, local bookstore, friend…I don’t care. Read. This. Book.)

Take it up a notch

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Several bloggers lately have been complaining of being too busy to blog, too stressed to write, stretched too thin to impart their usual wit and wisdom.

Exhibit A is our dear friend The Absence of Alternatives. Or subWOW. Or secret confessions of whatever the hell she used to call herself.

Doesn’t matter. What matters is she resisted the urge to apologize for sparse posts but was caught up in the anti-meme running amok on these Interwebs: post that you’re swamped.

In fact, post the Prince Humperdink version of being genuinely swamped.

“I’ve got my country’s five hundredth anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped.”

So I figured, since I have come out of the blog malaise that has plagued me all these months, since I have a thought or two that sticks in the molasses of my useless, addled, pudding brain giving me some hope that things might get better before I lose it and knife my whole family, what the heck? Let’s throw down the whole Princess Bride text.

The swamped quote rocks. It’s up there in my top five. But I need to hear your favorites. Because today, this evening, at this exact moment of “stop typing and do some yoga or go to bed so you don’t complain all day tomorrow about being tired and having nothing to show for your life,” at this blink, my favorite Princess Bride quote is:

“It’s possible, Pig, I might be bluffing. It’s conceivable, you miserable, vomitous mass, that I’m only lying here because I lack the strength to stand. But, then again… perhaps I have the strength after all. ”

Let’s hear your favorite. Ground rules? At Naptimewriting, the book version is fine. Preferred, really. There are bonus points for “Madam, feel free to flee,” any lines about stew, and anything from the extensive Fezzik training section. The movie version is fine. You will not be mocked for your choice, so let loose and retype the green spider lines.

Go on. I know you’re swamped and all, but play along when you have a moment.

On the record

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Okay, it’s official. I’m going to go way out on a limb and proclaim:

Fourteen hours a day (every single day) with small children is too much. But at least it’s not sixteen.

Five years of fourteen hours a day with small children (three of those years were actually sixteen hours a day, which is how I know fourteen is an improvement), with ten days total away (ten days of one thousand eight hundred and twenty-five, which is 99.45% work days) is too much.

Four years of major sleep disruptions (waking at least every three hours, generally more) is too much.

Further, seared polenta topped with goat cheese and marinara, followed by sliced beets and goat cheese glazed with balsamic, followed by honey on goat cheese is too much.

But just as I wouldn’t change the reasons I have had only ten days off in five years and haven’t slept well and haven’t had a complete thought to myself in I can’t remember how long…just as I wouldn’t change those decisions, I wouldn’t change the cheese addiction, either. Given all the legal and illegal coping mechanisms out there, cheese is at least a decent source of protein.

Blog Avoidance Syndrome

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I’ve recently diagnosed myself with a mild case of Blog Avoidance Syndrome. The causes are many, the symptoms are simple, and the prognosis is unclear. Let me ‘splain. No there is too much. Let me sum up.

We just moved. We just had several birthday parties. For small people. Involving cupcakes with candy eyeballs. The unpacking is getting really old. I have pressing things to do, like finish an article to submit it a.freaking.sap to a journal before someone else writes it and publishes it and rides its genius all the way to fame and glory and a tenured position at a major University. And I have to rework the novel that is 98% there and has been submitted to decent responses from agents but that needs just a a couple of days of work. And I need to exercise for the first time since January. And I need to get a babysitter so I can go more than 10 minutes without losing my cool. And I really need to update my playlist. And make baby food. And get a parking permit. And overthink the kindergarten decision we’ve kind of sort of maybe made.And hang pictures and knit something and sew something else and find a cure for cancer and start baking my own bread.

So while ideas for blog posts flutter in and out of the corners of my mind, I can’t hold a thought ’til the end of the day, which is when I carve out time to blog. Nor can I seem to find the time to write and edit. Nor prioritize the lame-ass musings I offer herein for the 200+ awesome readers who visit semi-regularly. Because I have other things to do. And the longer I go without posting, the more I think that those other projects are better uses of my time.

So forgive me my blahs. I need to get my act in gear and put my energy where my priorities are. But I can’t until I find the box that has the stuff I need. You’d think it’d be labeled as such, but I’m down to “office stuff,” “hats and shoes,” and “wine glasses”. And we all know which of those gets priority.

What I don’t understand is how other people do this. A mom of five children who unschools with respect and creativity for all. A mom who is promoting her new book and managing a business and reading up a storm. Families move all the time and manage to hang on. Other moms have small children and projects put on hold for longer than they’d like. Other academics get swamped with work and don’t keep up in one field. They all catch up eventually. So why am I counting on not getting back to things, not fixing the imbalance, not ever finishing any of the dozens of things on my list?

How are you all working and exercising and parenting and reading and connecting and moisturizing and cooking and thinking and enjoying? How the hell do you do it? Because I’m not doing any of it, really. Please, do, tell me your secret.

Fine. I admit it.

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Fine. Yes, after Peanut’s birthday party I piped the extra frosting onto toast to eat during a Top Chef marathon.

Okay, I’ll admit it: I packed as many books as I could into a huge box because this time we’re paying someone to move us and I want my money’s worth.

Yes. You caught me. I actually drove one of my children to his first soccer practice, which thereby begins my tenure as a soccer mom. And as we drove home and I realized this, I threw up in my mouth a little.

Fine, I’ll come clean about yelling at my husband during our five-year old’s birthday party. Okay, I yelled at my mom, too. And almost one of the kids. But he did kick me. The kid, not my husband. The latter’s only primary sin was putting the cupcakes I had meticulously decorated with four colors of handmade cream cheese icing into a cool oven for safe keeping. On the top rack. While it was in broiler position. So when I rushed to the kitchen for cupcakes to keep the five-going-on-feral children from destroying my house and each other, I ruined all the frosting pulling them out. Totally my fault. Except clearly his fault. Everyone knows you leave the cupcakes on the counter where the cat would never dream of licking them, or the fridge where the baby would never stick his hand in and pull them to the floor. Not that the cat got to the ice cream sandwiches, nor the baby to the grilled cheese. No. Of course not.

And that is why I’m carefully applying icing only toast. Not because I have a stress eating problem. Because I have Post Traumatic Birthday Party Stress Disorder and need to do something right today.

Now where are those candy eyeballs so I can make this toast look like a friendly, animated, ass-enlarging monster?

March’s motto

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I was writing to a friend to catch up on our lives. We’re disconnected by thousands of miles and yet linked by enough similarities to feel warmth in our infrequent connections. And I told her of celebrations and big changes and concerns and frustrations and…

And I came up with a surprisingly pithy description of March 2011:

“Happy, happy…happy…joy, joy….oh fuck.”

Do you have a month like that? Or a year like that?

Blink

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The first box is packed and I have a cut from the cardboard.

Poor prioritization means taxes have been submitted but journal articles haven’t.

Two bouts of flu in three weeks and I am now afraid of food.

Peanut is funny and defiant. Butter calls everything he likes a dog or a vacuum.

And they both run in different directions now.

Game on.

4 a.m.

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We’re almost out of soap.

Don’t forget to get soap

but remember to research and find one without fragrance or phthalates or parabens or all the other stuff on the EWG site and check out sanitizers too because we need to work on sanitizers and use them more and only alcohol-free and fragrance-free and what if the chemicals they use to replace alcohol is toxic and what if the toys we so carefully chose to be nontoxic turn out to be toxic and what if we move to a house with more air pollution and we don’t know and we pretend it’s okay but the ear infections get worse and then there’s asthma and loss of lung function.

I have to remember to email that woman.

I’m not sure if I should send her a hardcopy, too, since we’ve had problems with her getting emails

and while I’m emailing I’ll check in on that client and remind that friend and send out those and oh! I have to order those and print the labels and send them out but should we wait so it also has an address change and where are we going to get boxes and how will I remember to change the address with everyone and crap I think my driver’s license expired and damn I have to go to the DMV with a baby and probably a small child and what will I do if I’m sitting there for an hour and they lose it and I lose it and leave and have to go back. And is the air in the DMV filtered because what if it’s toxic?

I need to print that article and read it.

Maybe it’ll be useful for the paper I’m writing

but maybe the field has jumped ahead light years since I stopped working on it just before Butter’s birth and maybe I’ll have to read twenty journals before I start editing my piece and maybe while I’m reading those another will be published and then I’ll edit mine to reflect twenty new articles and it’ll seem better because it’ll take three months to do without a sitter or free time and maybe by the time I submit that one study I missed will be the talk of the academy and I will look like an idiot just because I didn’t freaking finish when I had the idea and the time last year and how embarrassing that I didn’t just publish it then. I should probably just give up.

I need to read that book about child development.

Feels kind of silly to only get to a birth-to-age-five book two weeks before he turns five, but it’ll be useful for the second one

except is the second one going to get more than the first because I know more and have more experience or is the second getting totally gyped because I’m already running on empty for patience, ideas, energy; and is the first missing out now that I need to pay so much attention to the second and is the second getting enough naps and attention and is the first getting enough protein and enriching activities and attention and is my work every going to get attention and what is that noise in the living room?

I think it’s supposed to rain today.

Rain helps with pollution so the air will be better tomorrow

but what happens if the rain cleans the air by adhering to particulates and pulling them down to the ground but then incorporate them into the soil and make the soil more toxic so that every rainstorm ever has polluted the soil and the baby has been eating rocks lately and the big one sometimes forgets to wash after playing outside and it turns out the dirt is the dirties toxic mass in the world and I didn’t even think about how insidious rain is because it does still clean the air which is terrible for tiny lungs, and…

[just as I posted, I found this. Thanks Universe.]